District volleyball: Pats in a pivotal play-in match

By Padraic Duffy, Journal staff | Tuesday, November 04, 2008

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RAPID CITY — The state volleyball playoffs begin this week throughout South Dakota, and that means that in District 4AA, the two lowest-seeded teams must get together for a single-elimination contest just to get into the 16-team Class AA field.

For the second straight season Douglas (22-7) must travel to Spearfish to play the Spartans (2-22) on Tuesday at 7 p.m. Spearfish knocked the Patriots out of the “play-in” game last year.

“It was tough for us last year,” Douglas head coach Jeff Nugent said. “We went up there last season, and they beat us. This year we have some momentum, we have good leadership out of our seniors and juniors and we feel like we have a balanced attack. We’re going to need to serve the ball well.”

The Patriots, members of the Black Hills Conference, played only three South Dakota Class AA schools this season — losing in four games to Pierre, Sturgis and Mitchell. As a result of that schedule, Douglas is in this situation despite a 22-7 record and being undefeated in the BHC.

“It does make a difference,” Nugent said of the schedule. “Being in the (Greater Dakota Conference) Spearfish has played tougher competition than we have, they have that going for them. It’s a little tough for our girls because it is a different level, but if we play defense like we played against Mitchell we couldn’t beat Hill City or Newell.” 

The winner of the Spearfish-Douglas game won’t exactly get the sweetest reward a District 4AA team could ask for. The winner travels to top-seeded Rapid City Stevens on Thursday night to take on the defending state champions in a gym where the Raiders haven’t lost all season.

The other side of the bracket has Sturgis (7-19 overall) traveling to Rapid City to take on Rapid City Central (18-14) at Naasz Gymnasium on Thursday at 7 p.m.

The winners of the District 4AA semifinals will meet at the site of the higher seed on Nov. 11 at 7 p.m. while the losers will play the third-place game that night at the higher seed’s gym. The runner-up and third-place winner then play in the Region 2AA tournament with the runner-up and third-place winner from District 3AA.

The four district champions in Class AA get berths in the state tournament in Rapid City on Nov. 20-22 at Rushmore Plaza Civic Center. The top two teams from Region 2AA will also get into the state tournament.

For now, the Patriots aren’t thinking about much other than playing a good volleyball match on Tuesday night.

“I’m not going to even talk about that,” Nugent said of the season being over for the loser of Tuesday’s game. “We want no negative thoughts in our heads. We’ve played good all season long when things get tough and we need to draw on some of those experiences and accentuate the positive.”

One big positive is that the Patriots have gone 12-1 since returning from the Dickinson Invitational at the end of September, with their lone loss coming to Mitchell.

“We know that Spearfish has some advantages,” Nugent said. “We’re just hoping that our kids can draw on our experiences from the season and use them. We’ve played well this year and we’re going to do our best to continue that.”