Champs! The Perfect Match at the Perfect Time

This story took second place for game story in the 2011 Minnesota Associated Press Sports Association Awards for dailies under 20,000.

It was a quest; a journey of women fueled by hearts and souls. It was a triumph; lifted by desire, dreams and sisterhood.

Through the catacombs of the underbelly of the Xcel Center their screams reverberated, bouncing off walls and ricocheting down hallways. With unbridled joy they sang at the top of their lungs, because there was nothing left to save their breathe for:

“We are family!
I got all my sisters with me!
We are family!
Get up everybody and sing!”

Since those warm, muggy days of August, until an unseasonably mild November afternoon, the Bethlehem Academy volleyball team had one mission. A simple mission that they believed in. On Saturday afternoon on the grandest stage, the Cardinals played their best match of the season and took home their fifth state championship in nine years.

Top-ranked BA crushed Nevis 3-0, winning each set by at least 11, as it claimed the 2011 MSHSL Class A State Championship at the Xcel Energy Center. Game scores were 25-9, 25-14, 25-8. BA allowed only 31 points in the entire match, three more than it allowed in one set against semifinal opponent Ada-Borup.

“It’s kind of surreal,” senior libero Kelsey Skluzacek said. “I can’t believe we’re the state champions. It’s amazing.”

After the Cardinals’ Section 1A championship win over Wabasha-Kellogg, both Maddie Borwege and Daisy Jo Robinson said it was the best feeling in the world. On Saturday, they were quick to admit they were wrong.

“This is like 10 times better than that,” said Borwege, who was second on the team with 12 kills.

If coach Franz Boelter is looking for an instructional tape to model what he envisions Cardinals volleyball to be, he need look no further than Saturday’s sweep.

“I really don’t think we’ve ever played better than that,” he said.

After three straight grueling matches — dating back to the section finals in Rochester — the Cardinals had held together with the strongest bonding agent of them all: Family.

“Those girls are our sisters,” said Robinson, who had 12 assists. “They mean everything to us. I’m going to miss them like crazy. I love them.”

On Saturday, the Cardinals didn’t need one of their patented comebacks. No one was biting her fingernails or trying to calm her rolling stomach. It was all Cardinals, all day.

BA opened the first set with a 5-1 spurt, and rode a seven-point Payton Nutter serving run to build a 19-4 lead before Nevis had time to blink.

From the start, BA stymied the Tigers’ two hitters: Riley Hanson and Megan Norby. Hanson, who led Nevis with 630 kills in the regular season, didn’t get her first kill until it was 23-7.

“We came out strong,” said Jessie Mathews, who had a match-high 13 kills. “We knew we had to have a good start.”

BA’s block, which had struggled for stretches in the quarterfinals against Win-E-Mac and again in the semifinals against Ada-Borup, was dominant all match. The Tigers finished with a hitting percentage of .052.

“We made other players hit the ball besides (Hanson and Norby),” Borwege said. “We were just reading where they were hitting the ball and we were able to come together.”

“The other thing that happened was we attacked them in areas that put them out of system a lot. It was tough for them to get in an offensive rhythm,” Boelter said.

The Cardinals continued their dominance in the second set, taking an 11-2 lead behind a nine-point Borwege serving run, which included two aces. Mathews added three straight kills to put BA up 15-3. They cruised to a 2-0 lead. Nothing changed in the third set. BA started with a 6-0 run and never looked back. The final point came on a service ace from Robinson, who served for BA’s final three points.

Afterward, Boelter said he would remember this team for its youth. After seniors Robinson and Skluzacek, the rest of the Cardinals who saw the court on Saturday are returning next year. Seventh-grader Payton Nutter led the Cards with 18 assists and freshmen Payton Schultz and Lauren Mathews combined for seven kills and 11.5 points. When BA won its last state championship, in 2009, it started a seventh grader (Schultz) and two freshmen (Borwege and Jessie Mathews). The 2011 team also started a seventh grader and two freshmen.

“I’d never guess we’d play a seventh grader, let alone start one, and now we’ve done it twice in three years,” Boelter said. “Obviously, they did a great job.”

It was the final match for seniors Robinson, Skluzacek, Ashley Reuvers, Emily Donahue and Kiersten Howell.

“All of those seniors that don’t play as much mean just as much as the girls that do play,” Jessie Mathews said. “We can’t do without our bench. All those girls mean just as much as everyone else to this team.”

Robinson had a piece of parting advice for the girls who will suit up for BA next year in defense of the title:

“Keep the chemistry alive and be a family,” she said. “Just stay a family.”