The #5 Indianola volleyball team took home a first place finish in the Little Hawkeye Conference tournament hosted at the Blake Fieldhouse at Indianola Middle School Thursday, sweeping group play and defeating Oskaloosa in the finals.
The Indians took first place in Group A going 3-0, defeating Grinnell 2-0 (21-10, 21-14), Pella 2-0 (21-11, 21-12), and DCG 2-0 (21-18, 21-14) to advance to the championship round, where they continued their perfect run, defeating Oskaloosa 2-0 (25-22, 25-18) after falling behind 15-9 in set two but ending the contest on a 16-3 run.
Head coach Kent Halstead tells KNIA Sports the Indians didn’t want to lose focus or momentum heading into postseason, and his squad is at it’s best when everyone is contributing wherever they can.
“Tonight was really about common vocabulary. It’s knowing our kids know what to say at timeouts, our girls that don’t play very much do the talking in timeouts. We call it 14 kids playing varsity, but only 6 can play at one time, I call it 14-6, how everyone has a role and that certainly happened tonight.”
Pella in Group A went 1-2, falling to Indianola 2-0 (21-11, 21-12) and DCG 2-0 (24-26, 20-22), but defeating Grinnell 2-0 (21-18, 21-15) to advance to the 5th place match, where they took down #8 Norwalk 2-0 (25-22, 25-19) to earn the top five finish.
In Group B, it was the Pella Christian Eagles who took advantage of their good play to end the season, going 2-1 falling to Oskaloosa but defeating Newton 2-1 (21-23, 21-9, and 15-10) in addition to Norwalk 2-0 (14-21, 19-21) as they advanced to the third place match where they came from behind against DCG to win 2-1 (15-25, 25-23, 19-17).
The #8 Norwalk Warriors went 1-2 in pool play, only taking down Newton 2-0 (21-14, 21-9) and falling to Pella Christian and Oskaloosa in a close 2-1 (15-21, 21-19, 13-15) where they fell to Pella in the 5th place match.
The tournament wraps up the regular season for all teams, who now advance to Regional Play. Find the postseason brackets below, in addition to a picture of all seniors in the conference.
