Rockets head to Region 4 Championship

The Class B Region 4 Volleyball tournament returned to the Devils Lake Sports Center this week.

The New Rockford-Sheyenne Rockets entered the tournament as the No. 2 seed, and played the third match of the night on Monday, Nov. 6 against the No. 7 Nelson County Chargers.

The Rockets came into this first game with a winning mentality, only having a few minor errors in all three sets.

The Chargers won the coin toss, and were to serve first. With a kill by NR-S sophomore, Ava Peterson, the Rockets were on the board. Another point for the Rockets came after a passing error by the Chargers.

The Rockets were ahead 2-0, before NR-S junior, Kaiya O'Connor, launched a hit out of bounds, giving the ball back to the Chargers.

But with a tip to center court by Lora Wobbema, the Rockets had the ball back in their possession. With a big block by Kelsie Belquist and O'Connor, the Rockets had scored another point. But a minor rotation error sent the ball straight back to the Chargers.

K. Belquist answered with a big kill to the far corner, but Nelson County's Madysen Blasey had the same idea and sent a kill to the corner to take the next point. And with a hitting error on E. Belquist, the Chargers earned another point.

But NR-S senior, Lucy Meier, took a big swing and sent the ball flying to center court to take possession of the ball once again.

With NR-S libero Logan Cudworth behind the service line, the Rockets had kept a 11-point lead over the Chargers until there was a blocking error by O'Connor and Meier that would send the ball back to the Chargers. But the next serve-receive for the Rockets brought the ball back into their possession after a kill by Peterson.

With errors on both sides of the net for the next two possessions, the Rockets earned the ball back once again.

And the Rockets kept adding point-for-point with Peterson behind the service line up until she served the ball into the net. With two more kills from K. Belquist, the Rockets took set number 1, 25-7.

The Rockets only allowed the Chargers to score 11 points in the second set and 13 points in the third.

The Langdon Area/Edmore/Munich Cardinals defeated the St. John Woodchucks 3-0 in the opening round of the tournament. Also winning their matches were the North Prairie Cougars and the North Star Bearcats.

On Tuesday, Nov. 7, the Cardinals took on the Cougars in the semifinals and defeated them 3-0, earning their spot in the championship match on Thursday night. With this win, LA/E/M head coach Rich Olson earned his 1,000th career win. Olson is only the third coach in the entire state to achieve this. Congrats Rich!

The Rockets versus the Bearcats followed the game between LA/E/M and North Prairie on Tuesday night.

And once again, the Rockets were ready to take the win and earn a chance at a rematch of last year's championship match.

With big kills from K. Belquist and Peterson, the Rockets took a 4-point lead to start off the game. A few errors allowed the Bearcats to add two points to the scoreboard, but it wasn't long before the Rockets started racking in the points. The score was 9-2 before North Star coach Aubree Page called a time out.

A few minor errors once again by the Rockets allowed the Bearcats to add five more points, but the Rockets still held an 8-point lead. And the Rockets kept pushing. Set one went in favor of the Rockets with a final score of 25-11.

The second set went just the same as the first. The Rockets allowed the Bearcats to score only 12 points total before taking set two, 25-12.

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Onto set number three, and the Bearcats weren't ready to give up.

The Rockets had a 6-point lead over the Bearcats before the Rockets sent possession back to the Bearcats after using up the five second time limit to serve.

The Bearcats clawed their way back and brought the score up to 10-12. Then it was NR-S head coach Sara Myhre's turn to call a timeout.

The Rockets and Bearcats rallied back and forth until the Rockets earned some headway, taking a 4-point lead once again.

And the Rockets kept the lead from there. A huge kill by Wobbema secured the 25-19 win over the Bearcats.

The Rockets will move on to compete against the Langdon Area/Edmore/Munich Cardinals on Thursday, Nov. 9 around 7:30 p.m. The North Star Bearcats and the North Prairie Cougars will play for third place at 6 p.m.

Results from the championship game will be posted on our website following the game.

Full stats from the Rockets' quarterfinal and semifinal matches will be printed in the Nov. 10 edition of the Transcript.