Raiders ready to defend state title

Central’s Shelly Wolfe thinks the Class AA tourney is ‘wide open’

By Padraic Duffy, Journal staff | Thursday, November 20, 2008

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RAPID CITY — The Rapid City Stevens volleyball team hopes the homecourt advantage it enjoyed throughout the season at Carold Heier Gymnasium can be moved to the east side of town for this weekend’s Class AA state tournament at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center.

The Raiders are the defending state champions after an improbable run through the top three seeds at last year’s tournament. While the Raiders were forced to replace the bulk of that team, head coach Josh Lien’s squad has made a smooth transition, rolling through the season with a

26-6 record without losing a single match in Rapid City.

“It does really help,” Lien said of the Raiders’ homecourt advantage at home, where they went 9-0 in the regular season. Throw in another win at Central and two more in the District 4AA playoffs and the Raiders have to like their chances when waking up in their own beds in the morning.

“We take that homecourt advantage pretty serious and fortunately so does our fan base,” Lien said. “We take a lot of pride in the fact that we are really, really hard to beat at home. We’re hoping that we can move across town and sneak a little bit of that homecourt advantage over into the civic center.”

The Raiders, the No. 3 seed, will take on Sioux Falls Lincoln in their first match of the tournament tonight at 6 p.m. Things get under way with the afternoon session. when top-seeded Aberdeen Central takes on Rapid City Central at noon. Watertown and Pierre will play at 2 p.m. in the No. 4-No. 5 game. Sioux Falls Washington and Sioux Falls Roosevelt will play the nightcap at 8 p.m.

The Cobblers have a tall order in taking on Aberdeen, a team that beat the Cobblers in four games on Oct. 10, but from the sounds of it, this tournament is anybody’s to win.

“I think anybody who plays well this weekend is going to have a great chance to place better than their seed,” Lien said. “It seems like everybody has beaten everybody else in the field. It seems like, especially in that top four, that anyone can win or lose.”

Sioux Falls Roosevelt, the No. 2 seed, has three losses on the year, all to ESD teams. Two of those squads, Watertown and Aberdeen Central, are in the tournament. Roosevelt also beat Watertown in the final match of the regular season. Aberdeen lost twice in the regular season, once to Stevens and once to Watertown. The Arrows have losses to Stevens, Aberdeen, Pierre (twice) and Sioux Falls Roosevelt.

Central head coach Shelly Wolfe likes her team’s chances as much as anyone else’s, despite coming into the tournament with the worst record and the eighth seed.

“I think AA is wide open,” she said. “Whoever plays the best this weekend is going to win, and I think anybody has a chance at playing the best. In a tournament like that, we might as well be playing the No. 1 seed first.”

Stevens will do its best to deal with the pressure of coming into the tournament as the defending champs.

“I don’t think there’s any more pressure than last year,” Lien said. “They put pressure on themselves because their expectations are high, but as far as outside pressure I don’t think so. Our pressure comes from our own expectations about what we can do.”