The Tulip City volleyball teams are set to trek north to Grinnell this afternoon for the Little Hawkeye Conference meet.

Both the Dutch and Eagles are part of three-way ties to end the season; No. 10 in 4A Pella atop the leaderboard, while Pella Christian hung on for a tie for 5th.

Tiebreakers will set the standings based on conference set win percentage, with Oskaloosa earning the one seed. Newton will be the 8 and Norwalk the 4, with DCG earning the 5. That means the Dutch, Eagles, No. 13 in 4A Indianola, and Grinnell will make up the other pool.

Pella Head Coach Mallory Peterson knows there is a strong chance they could see both Indians’ teams again in the upcoming regional playoffs with a state trip on the line, but she says the focus at this point in the season has to be on their own strengths.

“We go into every match at this point in the season, October volleyball, just trying to get better. We’ll see good teams at the conference tournament, since our conference is stacked. And the potential to see those two teams, you could look at it either way, we’re going to look at it on the positive side and just play to our level and play our volleyball and hopefully take that into the postseason. It would be nice to stay away from them, but it is what it is, so we’ll just do what we can on Thursday. It will be nice to see what they’ve got at this point in the season. We haven’t seen Indianola since early on, so we’ll just take what we can from it and move on to the postseason.”

Despite entering the tournament as underdogs, Eagles Head Coach Tammi Wight believes that if her squad competes, then success can be achieved.

“We’ve had this same mantra all year, all season and that is whoever it is on the other side of the court, doesn’t really matter. We will compete with whoever. If we do that and if we can maintain that competitive spirit that we have, the score and everything will take care of itself and success will come. So, that’s just what we preach and it’s kind of showing we are getting better and it’s showing up.

Matches from Grinnell for the Little Hawkeye Conference tournament begin at 4:30 p.m.