Sioux Center's Margo Schuiteman serves the ball against Cherokee during a Class 3A regional final on Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024, at Sioux Center High School.
Ryan Timmerman
Northwest Iowa certainly made its presence known in the Class 3A state volleyball tournament field.
The region will comprise a quareter of the teams in the 3A field when the state tournament gets underway on Monday from Xtream Arena in Coralville.
Unfortunately, there's only room for one team in the semifinals as the first round pits No. 2 seed Western Chrsitian against No. 7 seed Sioux Center, with first serve coming Tuesday at 10:25 a.m.
"It'll be an interesting matchup," said Western Christian head coach Tammi Veerbeek. "It's kind of unfortunate. We'd like to meet later in the tournament, but there definitely is some community pride. We know them well. I live right down the street from (Sioux Center head coach Julie Oldenkamp), and (Western Christian) has seven kids on the roster from Sioux Center that attended Sioux Center Christian School and kids that go to the same church, things like that.
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"It'll be fun. It's too bad it happens this early, but we can't change that, and it's time to go down (to Coralville) and make the most of the opporunity."
Western Christian has qualified for the state tournament an incredible 24 straight seasons.
Going to state is a feeling that doesn't get old for the Wolfpack.
"It's always exciting," Verbeek said. "It's always the goal at Western Christian to compete at the state tournament. Every year, there's new girls, girls that maybe were on the team the year before but didn't get to play. It's something we always look forward to."
The Wolfpack roster sports two seniors, both starters this season, but neither saw much time during last season's state title run, or the one prior.
"We have a lot of girls that have waited for their oportunity," Veerbeek said. "They grew up watching Western go to state as little girls and now it's their turn.
"Neither one of our two seniors stepped on the court last year (at state). Shae Reitsma was our middle last year, but she got hurt in the regional finals and our senior libero, Sydney Feenstra, was not in our starting rotation last year. So we're exciting to give those two this opportunity.
"We have some sophomores and juniors in our rotation that make up a strong corps to the team that won the state championship last year."
Junior Scarlett Winterfeld leads Western in kills this season with 320 and also ace serves with 51. Classmate Bentley Bliek has tallied just three fewer, and freshman Morgan Kooiman right there with them at 314 kills for the campaign.
The offense runs through junior setter Maggie Van Schepen, who was half of the setter duo in Western's 4-2 last season, but has grasp setting duties mostly to herself this season as she has 934 assists to date.
Feenstra leads the defensive side with 389 digs while Kooiman and Reitsma each have over 60 blocks for the season.
Sioux Center counters with senior Margo Schuiteman leading the attack. She has 262 kills on the season with a .230 efficiency mark. Sophomore Maryn Franken owns 225 kills for the campaign with a slightly higher swing percentage to pace the team's stellar .203 total efficiency percentage.
Junior Courteney Schmidt and senior Makailyn Vander Waal each have over 130 kills under their belts this season as the duo of junior Romee Bleeker and senior Laney Franken have accounted for the vast majority of team's 886 assists this season.
Schuiteman also leads the team in digs (268) and aces ( with senior libero Maci Schmalbeck accounting for 211 digs while Franken and Bleeker each have accounted for 200 or more digs individually.
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