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Skylights start fresh at Frontier tournament

In both 2012 and 2013, the Montana State University-Northern Skylights have had a good time at the Frontier Conference Volleyball Tournament. In fact, it’s been since 2011 since Northern hasn’t played in the Frontier title game.

And though that’s the goal for the 2014 Skylights, they’ll be decided underdogs when the Frontier tourney gets underway Friday afternoon in Butte. The 2014 Frontier tournament, with an automatic bid to the NAIA national tournament on the line, will run Friday and Saturday at Montana Tech’s HPER Gymnasium.

Northern (3-11, 7-2), enters the Frontier tournament as the No. 7 seed, and the Skylights will face No. 2 seed Lewis-Clark State (11-3, 17-8) in the opening round at 5 p.m. And while MSU-N head coach Bill Huebsch knows his team has a hill to climb this weekend, he feels good about where his team is mentally heading into the matchup with the Warriors.

“The great thing about the tournament is, everyone starts over,” Huebsch said. “Records and how you played in the season don’t really mean anything anymore. And we all know, in this crazy sport of volleyball, anything can happen.

“And I think we’re in a good place right now,” he continued. “The kids have had a good week of practice. We’ve had our ups and downs this season, but in the last few weeks, we’ve had more ups and downs. So I know they’re excited about this tournament. I’m excited to see how we do.”

The tournament is a single-elimination format, so there’s no margin for error. MSU-N and LCSC have met in the last three Frontier tournaments, with the Skylights knocking off the Warriors in the quarterfinals in 2012 and the semifinals a year ago. As for this season, LCSC swept the series, handing Northern a season-opening sweep back in September in Lewiston, Idaho, as well as a five-set defeat in Havre last month. But it was in that five-set loss, and drawing from past experiences in the tournament, that Huebsch says his team can take some confidence into Friday’s match.

“For whatever reason, we’ve been able to have some success against them (Warriors) in the past in this tournament,” Huebsch said. “We’ve just played well, and sometimes, it’s about matchups, and maybe we match up better against them than some of the other teams.

“It wasn’t that way when we played them at the beginning of the season,” he continued. “But when we played them here, we played one of the best matches of our season, and if a couple of points go our way, we beat them in five. So, while we know they are a very good team, and they have a lot of talented, athletic players, we feel confident that if we play the way we’re capable of, we’ll be competitive in that match. And then, who knows what might happen.”

The Warriors are indeed athletic and talented. LCSC is led by Treneisha Doyle, an outside hitter who has 288 kills, 138 digs and 29 blocks this season. But the Warriors have plenty of talent around Doyle. LCSC is the second-best hitting team in the Frontier, and Desiree Neilson, Marissa Verduci and Chelsea Strong have all broken the 200-kill barrier in 2014. Add in libero Russia Robinson, who’s one of the top servers and defenders in the Frontier, and two talented setters, and the Warriors have all the makings of a dangerous and powerful team.

But the Skylights have talent, too, and talent across the net doesn’t scare them. After all, Northern has played 11 nationally ranked teams this season, including No. 1 Rocky Mountain College twice, as well as defending national champion Brownsville, and then No. 2 Concordia-Irvine.

“We’ve talked all week, that this is what that brutal non-conference schedule was all about,” Huebsch said. “It was really tough going and playing all those really good teams, and then to have the No. 1 team in the country in your conference, it’s been tough for a young, inexperienced team like we are. But it will also pay off now. Everything we’ve done, everybody we went and played back in August and September, it was all for this weekend. This weekend is when we need to play our very best, and if we do that, I can’t and won’t be disappointed with whatever happens.”

When the Skylights are at their best, like they were three weeks ago against LCSC, they are a team nobody wants to play. Senior Dayna Jensen has come on strong as of late, and finished the regular season sixth in the Frontier with 270 kills. She’s also second on the Skylights with 277 digs, while she’s served up 24 aces. In the middle, Erin Jensen is also playing her best at the moment. Jensen has 193 kills and 49 blocks this season, while freshman Taylor Woolman has 103 kills and Carlie Haeffner has 50 blocks. Jessica Wilcox finished the regular season with 66 blocks, while Sydney Stolearcius and Sarah Stringfellow lead Northern’s back row with 302 and 204 digs, respectively.

But to beat the Warriors for a third straight time in the Frontier tourney, the Skylights will need to be better offensively than they have been for much of the season. Northern enters the tourney last in the Frontier in hitting percentage, kills and kills per set. But if MSU-N can turn on the offense, then the Skylights are a tough team, because when they’re hitting, they are also tough in serve-receive, and they are third in the league in blocks.

And while Northern is only focused on its first-round match with the Warriors, finishing ahead of UM-Western — which also went 3-11 in league play but was swept by MSU-N — allowed the Skylights to be on the other side of the draw from No. 1 RMC. The Battlin’ Bears (26-2) are heavy favorites this weekend, having only dropped two sets in the Frontier all season long. But on the other side of the draw, the winner of the Northern/LCSC match will play either third-seeded Carroll College (16-12) or sixth-seeded Westminster (10-17) in the semifinals. RMC plays Western (11-15) on the other side and the winner of that match will take on the winner of fourth-seeded UGF (16-12) and fifth-seeded Montana Tech (11-15) in the other semifinal. The semifinals are set for Saturday morning, and the championship match will be played at 7 p.m. Saturday night with the winner advancing to the national tournament Nov. 19-Dec. 6 in Sioux City, Iowa.

The national tournament is where the Skylights are trying to go, too. Even though their record hasn’t been what they were hoping for this season, the Skylights haven’t given up on that dream. They’ll fight to reach that goal, a goal they were so close to achieving the last two season, as hard as they can Friday in Butte.

“It’s tournament time, it’s time to step up,” Huebsch said. “This is what we’ve worked so hard for all season. This is a new chapter in our season, and the kids are excited about that. And I’m really looking forward to seeing us compete. If we do that, if we compete and play as hard as we can, than that’s all I can ask. If we do that, I think we’ll be fine.”

Northern’s opening-round match of the 2014 Frontier tournament will get underway at 5 p.m. Friday in Butte. The first match, between RMC and Western is at noon with the match between UGF and Montana Tech to follow at 2 p.m. The final match of the first round, between Carroll and Westminster, will start at 7 p.m.

 

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