Annabelle Staus (Photo by Noah Clooten)
CANDO — Things look different for North Star volleyball this year.
A host of seniors have parted ways, including all-region setter Jorie Ahlberg and all-region middle blocker Anna Bessonova. Players are learning new positions, and some are getting their first full year of varsity experience.
But with six seniors and a talented young core, the Bearcats are finding their form as a group.
“They’ve been very good teammates to each other,” North Star head coach Kirstin Ahlberg said. “We’re still learning all kinds of things. We have two brand new setters in there, so we’re constantly giving information to them. We lost middle blockers, so we’ve got new people learning new places.”
Last year, North Star finished as the No. 7 seed in a 10-team Region 4. The Bearcats had a promising start before injuries and inconsistencies set them back in a competitive region. The No. 2 seed, and eventual third-place winner, was North Prairie.
On Tuesday, North Star (5-2, 1-0, 1-0) outlasted North Prairie (2-5, 1-1, 0-1) in five sets in the teams’ district opener.
The set scores for North Star were 17-25, 25-15, 23-25, 25-16 and 15-12.
“It’s a huge learning experience for us,” Ahlberg said. “It was a big district game for us. We needed this game, and I wanted to come out strong this year to get that district win. We did a lot of things that we need to work on and get better at, but I’m very happy for them, the growth as a team, and the team bonding, that we were able to finish it out at home.”
North Prairie is another team that lost a talented senior class, including the Region 4 Outstanding Senior Athlete in Madison Samuelson. J. Ahlberg, Bessonova and Samuelson are now all teammates on the Lake Region State College volleyball team.
North Star and North Prairie are two of nine teams in the new Region 2, District 4, after the recent realignment. All nine teams were in Region 4 last year; the outlier is Hillsboro/Central Valley, which moved up to Class A.
So the Bearcats will mostly face the same competition. But the postseason looks a little different with the addition of a district tournament before the region tournament. Like in basketball, there will be state qualifier games for the second and third-place teams in each region tournament.
“I like that. I think it makes it more competitive,” Ahlberg said. “You really got to get the top four to get to that region tournament. Plus, there’s also that back door that you can get to state. So that gives us hope of, if we can’t make it to and get first place in that super region, we can still battle. That third-place region game means something now.”
After starting with a 4-2 record on the road, the Bearcats didn’t immediately gel in front of the home crowd on Tuesday.
They faced a deficit as large as 20-7 in the opening set. North Prairie had a lot early blocks, and the Bearcats were getting overpowered.
A 6-0 run, though, helped them get back on the right track. They still lost the first set, but they made it as close as 24-17.
And so the second set looked completely different. North Star came out to a 19-9 lead after wining 15 points in a 20-point span.
“We needed to stop shooting ourselves in the foot,” Ahlberg said. “We made error after error after error, and we can’t do that. We needed to pass the ball and then just make sure we corrected those errors and played our game. We just kept making mistakes that we don’t normally do.”
North Prairie won three points in a row, but North Star still finished off a comfortable 25-15 win to even it up at a set apiece.
The Bearcats found a comfortable rotation with junior Teegan Knudson as their libero. Senior middle blocker Annabelle Staus, who’s 6-foot-2, was their most potent attacker with 10 kills on the night. Senior Claire Weber, who played libero last year, slid in as another middle blocker.
Weber effectively fills the hole left by Bessonova.
“Claire Weber has done a fantastic job of taking a different role,” Ahlberg said. “And she will do whatever the team needs her to do. … She actually played middle a couple years ago, I think, in JV. So she has played the position a long time ago. But she said, ‘Anything, Coach, to help the team.’”
The Bearcats controlled the early going of the third set. But after a lead as large as 8-5, they surrendered four straight points and never climbed back over the hump.
It was a one-point set late, with North Prairie up 24-23. The Cougars finished it off with a deep shot that the Bearcats couldn’t defend. They took a stinging 25-23 loss to go down two sets to one.
But in the fourth set, they looked more like the Bearcats of the second set. They won 25-16, going on a 12-4 run at one point.
Two of the most dynamic players for North Star were young players who joined last year’s varsity team midseason.
One was freshman outside hitter Claire Jorde, who made nine kills and added 23 digs.
“She’s very fun to watch. She is quite the athlete,” Ahlberg said. “And she’s always got a smile on her face. You can tell that she loves the game of volleyball. So anything that she does, it just kind of wows me — at how fast she moves on the court and how high she can jump.”
Another was outside hitter Genevieve Ahlberg, who’s Coach Ahlberg’s younger daughter. She contributed last year as a seventh-grader and is still in middle school now.
She had some errors on Tuesday, particularly early on. But she still came up with five kills and two aces. She kept points alive, too, leading the team with 25 digs.
“She has grown a lot, from just thinking about what she was like at the end of the season last year, to this year,” Coach Ahlberg said. “She’s not gonna be happy with her game that she had tonight. She showed her youth tonight. But that’s okay. She’ s got a lot of things to learn. And the great thing about her is she wants to get better. She’s gonna be in the gym, and she’s gonna do whatever it takes to get better.”
It came down to the tie-breaking fifth set. North Star led 2-1, then lost three straight. But after it was knotted at 5-5, the Bearcats went on a 5-0 run to take control.
The young Ahlberg had two kills in that span, and Weber added a kill from up front.
The Bearcats held on to win the final set, 15-12. Staus took charge with some hard hits from the middle, and an error by North Prairie sealed the deal.
Staus is one of the senior leaders, along with Karlee Gefroh, who had seven kills, four digs and two aces. The team carries a smooth balance of older and younger players alike.
“I expect them to show their leadership, which they did,” Ahlberg said. “Karlee came in, and in the second through the fifth set, had a lot of great plays that were in. She was hitting in and making a lot of smart plays. … They’re just getting their feet wet about how much they have to lead the team as seniors.”
North Star plays on the road Thursday against Drayton/Valley-Edinburg — a region foe, but not a district foe. The Bearcats host their second district match on Tuesday against Four Winds/Minnewaukan.
