With eight days off before the start of postseason play, Ankeny volleyball coach Liz Baethke needed to find a way to keep her team sharp.
She didn’t have to look very far.
Baethke relied on some intrasquad scrimmages to prevent any rust for the third-ranked Hawkettes, who began their quest for another state tournament berth with a 25-10, 25-11, 25-10 victory over visiting Cedar Rapids Jefferson in a Class 5A regional semifinal on Thursday.
“Honestly, some of our junior varsity girls are better than some of the athletes we face,” said Baethke. “I’m very grateful that we have such a deep bench, and we have kids that are willing to come in after their season is over and help themselves get better and the other kids get better too.”
Ankeny junior Elle Isaacson agreed that the scrimmages were beneficial.
“We have a pretty good JV team, and it’s been fun to scrimmage them,” Isaacson said. “They kept us on our toes and moving during the off week. They’re really good actually–they’re one of the top JVs in the state–and that helped us because they push us in practice.”
Ankeny (30-6) reached the 30-win mark for the second time in Baethke’s four seasons at the school. It was the seventh consecutive victory for the Hawkettes, who will now host No. 13 Cedar Rapids Kennedy (19-15) in the regional final on Tuesday at 7 p.m.
“It feels great,” said Ankeny junior Hailey Wiederin, who pounded a team-high 11 kills. “It’s a great start to the postseason for sure.”
Ankeny jumped out to an 8-1 lead in the opening set and never looked back. Isaacson capped the run with back-to-back aces, two of her four on the night.
“We worked a lot on serving this week in practice,” Isaacson said. “It’s a controllable, and so we worked a lot on serving space and serving short to get teams out of system. We tried to implement that on the court tonight.”
Wiederin later had an ace of her own during a 7-0 run that extended the Hawkettes’ advantage to 16-5. She contributed three of the team’s 12 aces.
“We’ve been working on serving hard and serving aggressive,” Wiederin said.
After Jefferson used a 4-0 run to cut the lead to 17-10, Ankeny then answered with eight straight points and closed out the set on a kill by Quinn Roush. The last seven points came off the serving of Raquel Risk, who went 19-of-19 from behind the line and had a pair of aces.
“We had a really good night serving,” Baethke said. “We’ve been wanting to have tougher, aggressive serves, and I thought we did that tonight.”
The Hawkettes got off to another fast start in Set 2, taking a 6-1 lead on an ace by Isaacson. They later increased the margin to 22-9 on three straight kills by Wiederin.
“We just had to play hard and like we know how, and just stay disciplined,” Wiederin said.
Ankeny closed out the second set on a kill by Risk, then scored 11 of the first 13 points in the third set to put an end to Jefferson’s upset hopes. The J-Hawks (10-24) did manage to close the gap to 13-8 before Baethke’s team responded with a 12-2 run to finish off the sweep.
Jefferson also lost to the Hawkettes in a regional semifinal two years ago.
“They have some pieces for sure,” said Baethke, who scouted the J-Hawks during their quarterfinal win over Des Moines East on Tuesday. “They looked really good on the net because there was no block (from East), but we just had to come into tonight with the mindset that they 100 percent believed they were going to win and we needed to take care of our side. We just had to be organized and not get drawn into their tempo. Play our Hawk tempo.”
Marlee Ellison had seven kills and hit .417 for the Hawkettes, who hit .280 as a team. She also contributed eight digs.
Isaacson finished with six kills and four blocks, Risk chipped in five kills, and Roush added four kills and a team-high five blocks. Kellen Roush dished out 28 assists and racked up a team-high 11 digs.
Baethke said she was reluctant to go to her bench as the match progressed.
“We still need to play,” she said. “I wanted to sub, but I also knew that we needed to get ready for our next match.”
Kennedy (19-15) advanced to the regional final with a 25-21, 25-21, 25-21 sweep over North Scott. Maddie Kray and Addy Phillips each had nine kills to lead the Cougars’ balanced attack.
“We’re really excited going into this next game just to give it everything we’ve got because we really want to make it to state,” Wiederin said.
Ankeny is seeking a ninth consecutive trip to the state tournament. The Hawkettes defeated Kennedy in the 2019 regional final and swept the Cougars in last year’s regional final, 25-11, 25-20, 25-8.
“We’ve played them before so we kind of know what to expect,” Isaacson said.
