(Story by Stephen McDaniel)
The Ankeny and Ankeny Christian Academy volleyball teams were both ranked among the top teams in their respective classes coming into the 2026 season.
A winner-take-all third set was needed on Tuesday night to decide which of the two squads was going to open its season with a 2-0 record.
The Hawkettes pulled out a 15-13 victory and secured a 2-1 win over the Eagles after both squads had recorded 2-0 sweeps over North Polk during a triangular meet at Ankeny High School.
“The kids were excited to get the ball rolling, and we were just kind of excited to try our new things that we have,” said Ankeny coach Liz Baethke. “Some of it was great, some of it was not, but we have things we have to work on anyways, so good takeaways.”
“I’m super proud of the girls,” said ACA coach Michele Quick. “We came in with nothing to lose being a smaller school, but I always tell the girls that a 1A school can still compete with anybody and don’t categorize themselves that way.”
Ankeny is used to hosting a quadrangular meet featuring Ankeny Christian, North Polk and Dike-New Hartford, but this season it dropped down to a triangular with the Blue Devils dropping out of the mix.
But that didn’t stop three quality teams from colliding with each other to get their seasons started.
The IGHSAU’s preseason polls had the Hawkettes as the No. 3 team in Class 5A, while the Eagles were No. 4 in Class 1A and the Comets listed at No. 11 in Class 4A.
“It’s been awhile and I’m just really excited to get rolling, we got the first two games out of the way and we can compete with the teams in the CIML,” said Ankeny outside hitter Hailey Weiderin. “It feels good to get some good competition at the start and help prepare us for the road ahead.”
The clash between the two top-five teams to close out the meet matched the hype.
Fresh off a strong 25-10 second-set victory against North Polk, the Hawkettes were hitting their stride and a pair of early runs from the trio of senior Marlee Ellison and juniors Weiderin and Elle Isaacson, along with some blocking up front from Quinn and Kellen Roush, helped Ankeny jump out to an early 11-5 lead.
ACA pulled it back within four points after sophomore Avlyn Davis recorded a pair of aces, but the Hawkettes answered with 4-0 and 3-0 runs to build a 21-11 advantage late in the set.
Isaacson recorded a kill to get Ankeny on set point, and a hitting error from the Eagles three points later allowed the Hawkettes to clinch a 25-15 first set.
“We just had to stay scrappy and go for everything,” Weiderin said. “We knew they have some shorter offense, and we had to be ready off the block.”
Ankeny looked to cruise toward a second-set victory after a strong start until the Eagles clawed their way back into things.
The Hawkettes went on a 7-1 run after trailing 2-1 to open the set and later had a 4-0 run sparked by a kill and a pair of aces from Kellen Roush and a 3-0 run fueled by a pair of kills by Weiderin that had them up 17-10 in the set.
A kill by ACA sophomore Havanna Dolbeare ignited a comeback for the Eagles.
ACA took advantage of some miscues on Ankeny’s end and, along with a kill from junior Breeze Bentz and an ace from sophomore Gwendolyn Ramsay, it went on an 8-1 run that tied the set up at 18-18.
The Eagles fell back behind 21-18 and answered by tying things back up at 21-21 and when they went down 23-21, they rattled off four straight points to take the set, 25-23, at the very end.
“I always tell the girls that we can play anybody and beat anybody,” Quick said. “We just have to keep that mindset and then work through some of those nerves, the quirks and things that are happening.”
Ankeny tried to bounce right back by leaning on Weiderin and Quinn Roush to give them a 3-0 lead to open up the third set, but the Eagles promptly answered with a 3-0 run themselves.
It was a 5-1 run fueled by a pair of kills and an ace from Ellison that gave the Hawkettes an advantage until ACA battled back with Bentz recording a kill that had the two squads tied up at 12-12.
The Hawkettes looked to their top two returning kill leaders in Weiderin and Ellison to help them close things out, and the Ankeny duo was able to help them go on a 3-1 run after being tied to claim the third set.
“We just needed to stay swinging because that was what was working for us,” Weiderin said. “(ACA) is a pretty scrappy team, picking up a lot of the tips and everything, so we just had to swing like we can and play our tempo.”
Ankeny got its night started off against the Comets, which saw the Hawkettes claim a 2-0 win after getting off to a slow start. They traded points back-and-forth with North Polk and faced a few small deficits throughout the first set.
After trailing 17-14, the Hawkettes flipped a switch and went on an 11-2 run, which included a 7-0 spurt to close out the set.
They carried that momentum with them into the second set where the Hawkettes snowballed an early run into an 18-5 lead going into a North Polk timeout. They then outscored the Comets 7-5 to secure the sweep.
“I felt like we were trying to play too safe,” Baethke said. “Once we settled in, we started attacking the ball and play ‘Hawk Tempo,’ which means play our game, play our side and we prefer that it’s clean. In short little bursts, there were some amazing things going on, but also the lows we need to bring up to more of a consistent play.”
With a ton of returning firepower from last year’s 28-9 team, the Hawkettes are gearing up for another big season.
One of their big goals is to keep finding ways to throw teams off with the amount of options they have between the likes of Weiderin, Ellison, Isaacson, Quinn Roush and Raquel Risk. Part of that is the Hawkettes having Weiderin and Isaacson attack from the back row on top of also patrolling outside.
There’s no shortage of options for the Ankeny setters to look toward, and sophomore setter Kellen Roush stepped up to take those reins in the triangular.
“We want to be unpredictable, and we want to be hard to scout,” Baethke said. “So we know teams will maybe not know how to prepare, and that’s kind of the way we wanted to enter the season by throwing teams off balance.”
ACA found similar luck against North Polk despite the team finding themselves in a different situation.
The Eagles feature a much younger team led by a pair of veterans in Bentz and senior Katelyn Weathers. Outside of those two, ACA has just two other upperclassmen and eight combined freshmen and sophomores listed on its roster.
Their trio of freshmen in Gabbie Quick, Maleah Porter and Dani Craighead all played big roles for the Eagles during their sweep over North Polk and their battle against the Hawkettes.
“They’ve been playing higher caliber volleyball, but when you play in club and you only play in your same age group, it’s very different when you come on the court in high school because you’re playing all age groups,” Quick said. “Ankeny is pretty well stacked with an amazing lineup and upperclassmen and I felt our freshmen, our sophomores and our team really just battled really well and held their own.”
ACA jumped out to an early lead in the first set with its top returning kill leader in Dolbeare hammering back-to-back kills that put the Eagles up 13-6.
They never surrendered the lead and ultimately closed out the set, 25-20, on a kill from Craighead.
The second set saw the Eagles also have to battle back from a deficit after trailing 16-11 midway through the set.
ACA took advantage of some hitting errors, a service error and a net violation to close the gap before Craighead and Porter tallied back-to-back kills to tie things up at 18-18.
Later tied at 20-20, the Eagles went on a 5-0 run powered by a Bentz ace, a kill from Porter and two kills from Dolbeare to close out the 25-20 victory.
“It’s definitely a good feeling because it’s on paper now,” Quick said of the team’s win over North Polk. “We had a lot of preseason scrimmages. I think we played 30 preseason scrimmages before tonight and we learned a lot there. But taking that win against North Polk, (Sam Sheldon) is a great coach, and they have a reputable program there, so it just gives us that edge on the shoulder when we go into the rest of our season.”
Ankeny will look to carry its success with it into the weekend when the Hawkettes head across town for the Ankeny Centennial Early Bird Tournament on Saturday.
The Hawkettes are slated to face No. 12 Waukee, No. 8 Pleasant Valley and Class 3A No. 3 Western Christian in pool play.
ACA will look to build off its own success when the Eagles travel to Albia for the Albia Invitational.
