State volleyball tournament

One of the best things about prep sports is the state tournaments. Of course, they're a lot more fun if your favorite school happens to have made the elite cut, therefore giving many high school students across the state a day to play hooky.

The state volleyball tournament at the Xcel Energy Center was this past weekend. Thursday through Saturday the section champions from each of the three classes competed for championship and consolation titles. Twenty-four teams boil down to three state champions.

Let's go Huskies!
Being that I'm an Andover girl, I can't go further without mentioning that the Huskies made it into the tourney once again. They came away as the consolation champions in 2009, and they were the runners-up a couple of years ago.

I was unable to attend the quarterfinal matches on Thursday, where Andover lost to powerhouse Wayzata in Class 3A. The quarters are always an exciting atmosphere, because every team is in contention for a championship, thus bringing out a ton of fans. For teams that fall to the consolation brackets (like Andover) on Friday, the number of supporters shrinks significantly in most cases, and pep bands often don't make the trip either, which is a shame.

Going against this trend, I decided to watch Andover's 11 a.m. consolation semifinal match against Moorhead on Friday. The Huskies took care of the Spuds in three (games or sets... the term has changed recently, but I think I like the old-school games). It was fun to watch some volleyball again and see a few familiar faces from the Andover crowd.

Pleasant surprise
Afterward, I headed down to see if I could meet up with one of the Star Tribune writers who was there covering the afternoon and evening matches. I thought I was just going to say hi, but then he quickly found someone from the High School League and got me a media pass. So I spent the next couple hours watching from the media table down on the floor.

I also took a walk around the entire concourse at the arena level, going past all the locker rooms and getting a peek into the media room, complete with large, blown-up photographs of the Minnesota Wild hanging on the walls.

Match of the tournament
The match I watched that afternoon was the Class 1A semifinals with No. 1-seeded Minneota versus No. 4 Martin County West. Being the No. 1 seed always results in being the favorite, but MCW fought back from two games down to win 24-26, 17-25, 25-11, 25-19, 17-15, upsetting Minneota.

It was probably one of the best matches of the tournament. Five-gamers are always intense, especially when the winning team comes from behind the way MCW did. There were also a lot of 3-0 sweeps, so a match like this one was welcomed, and it came with an electric atmosphere.

Watching the match from the floor level was pretty cool. I enjoyed being in the thick of things, trying to keep track of some of the star players and just generally learning more about the game.

Thanks a lot, snow
Had it not been for the snowy blizzard on Saturday morning, I probably would have returned for the 9 a.m. consolation-final match between Andover and East Ridge. Instead, I decided to head down there later for the 3A final that looked like a good one on paper, between Wayzata and Lakeville North.

Once again, I was able to watch the match from the floor at the media table. I even got into the action by tossing the stray ball back to a Wayzata player after it landed on the table a couple of points into the match.

It wasn't the classic match you would expect from the No. 1 and No. 2-seeded teams; North (No. 1) swept Wayzata in three games with scores that really weren't that close: 25-13, 25-18, 25-13. The McNeil sisters on the Lakeville side were just too much for Wayzata. The first-game domination set the tone for the rest of the match.

So goes another sporting event to stash in my learning-experience file. I just want to keep learning more about more sports and about how to cover them from a media standpoint. It's all about trying to improve while enjoying sports at the same time.