|
Editorial: Fabulous year for netters
Op-Ed · December 11, 2014
If you punch in Quikstatsiowa.com and look at West Branch volleyball’s season, there’s a whole lot of green W’s going down the right side of the page.
Thirty-four of them, in fact.
What a great year.
The Bears only lost six games all season. Taking count of the sets, West Branch won 82 sets and lost 19. Only four times this year did a losing opponent take one set away from the Bears, and only once did a losing opponent take two sets (No. 7-ranked West Liberty).
That means the Bears swept its opponents 28 times in those 34 wins. So the Bears won 85 percent of its 40 games, and of those wins swept opponents 82 percent of the time.
The Class 2A No. 8 Bears rose from No. 10 at the beginning of the season by beating Class 3A No. 7 West Liberty twice (3-2, 2-1), sweeping Class 2A No. 10 Durant twice (once in regular-season play, and once in the regional finals), and beating No. 15 North Cedar 3-1 in the regional semifinals.
West Branch cut through its opponents like a buzz saw.
Imagine what bringing those kinds of numbers means when the opponents see the Bears walk on to the opposite side of the net. West Branch’s only losses came to non-conference opponents at tournaments. Nobody in all of the River Valley Conference was able to stop them, and the Bears took first place in the RVC South and went on to become the RVC tournament champions, earning an invitation to the state tournament.
All that said, we found it a bit confusing when only two players — Madison Russell and Haley Poula — were named to the RVC’s elite team.
The River Valley Conference did things a bit differently this year. Rather than picking First, Second and Third-team all-conference players, they chose an “Elite” team and then an all-conference team. West Branch did get four players on the all-conference team — juniors Allyson Simpson, Bailey Lukavsky and Trystin Luneckas and sophomore Abby Knoop — but the Bears’ record strongly suggests some or all of those four should have been bumped up to “elite.”
Ah well, five of those players can return in 2015. And they will return under the RVC’s 2014 Coach of the Year, Josh Lukavsky, who just finished his fifth year as head coach and has taken West Branch to the state tournament twice — 2012 and 2014.
The graduating senior standout, Russell had a fantastic year that included earning her 1,000th career kill (she finished with 1,086) and 1,000th career dig (she finished with 1,010). Her serving efficiency hit 93.6 percent and her career average was 93.5 percent. Those statistics and her versatility on the court gave her a choice of colleges offering her scholarships. In November she officially accepted an offer from the University of Missouri-St. Louis to play for the Tritons.
When the Bears showed up Nov. 12 at the U.S. Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids for the state tournament, they fell to the eventual state champions, Dike-New Hartford. But Coach Lukavsky correctly noted that West Branch fought hard and forced D-NH to “raise their level of play” to put the game away.
Congratulations go out to West Branch volleyball for another exciting year on the court and find ourselves justifiably optimistic for next year as well.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
