Step IV is a bust: Jaguar volleyball falls to red-hot Nevis

One of this year's seniors consoles a younger player after the loss tonight. There was a huge amount of mutual respect between all four classes of girls on the varsity team: freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors.

Megan Weller fires off a serve in game three tonight. She and three other outstanding seniors will graduate next spring. They will be hard to replace if not impossible to replace, but at B-B-E we don't necessarily seek to replace players, we just groom more great ones and keep things running at a very high level!!

 Losing to "red hot" teams is getting old, but there's not much you can do about it but tip your hat to your opponent. The Nevis Tigers became three-time defending Section 5A champions tonight with a 3-0 sweep over our Jaguars volleyball team. They've won 4 of the last 5 section crowns since 2009. Game scores were 25-19, 25-18 and 25-10.

A long list of area teams fell today in volleyball section finals: Sauk Centre, Morris Area/Chokio-Alberta, BOLD, Henning. One piece of good news: the Maple Lake Irish punched their ticket to state with an amazing 3-2 win over Park Center tonight. The Irish trailed 12-6 in game five...an almost insurmountable deficit, when they proceeded to score 9 unanswered points to take it 15-12! Great job to the Irish, Coach Marty Kiebel and his staff.

**Posting again: here's my Sauk Centre Herald photo gallery from the Royalton win.
http://saukherald.smugmug.com/2013SPORTS/B-B-E-fall-varsity-sports/Step-III-Jaguar-volleyball-win

The Section 5A championship album will be added on Sunday or Monday...most likely Monday. I need some time off on Sunday!!!!!!

B-B-E finishes 26-8 overall after another absolutely tremendous season on the volleyball courts. I have an enormous amount of pride and admiration to the hard work our girls put into the sport. They truly love the game and love keeping B-B-E's great tradition going. Of course, going to state is clearly the goal every year, but just being in the running for state is incredibly difficult, yet we've done it every season since 2004 (getting into a section championship). That has to be one of the greatest postseason streaks in Minnesota. I know it rates right up there with such volleyball greats as Stewartville, Alexandria, Marshall, Minneota and others.

Does it suck to keep losing to Nevis right before "state"! You bet it does. But you can't help but have respect and tip your hat to their program. They will be on top until someone knocks them down...I visited briefly with Mr. Gossen tonight about what happened to us this weekend. He wholeheartedly agreed with my statement: if you are tired of losing, you just have to get better. If you work to get to a certain point but that's not enough - you just have to keep improving. He has what I call a fantastic sports mind. He gets it. He knows all about building winning programs in a variety of sports.

It boils down to that, underclassmen, no matter if it's volleyball, tennis, football, speech, FFA, basketball, etc...keep up the hard work, do your best, throw everything you have into what you love (athletics, academics, fine arts) and success will follow!!!