Photo by Noah Clooten
LANGDON — The Cardinals have a history of excellence unlike any other team in Class B volleyball.
Langdon Area/Munich has made the state tournament 23 times in 37 years. It’s been in the championship match nine times. It’s won five state titles — including the one last fall.
“We’ve had a lot of the same coaches in place for a lot of those years,” said Rich Olson, who’s entering his 30th year as head coach. “And for a long time, that was key: Consistency. Dedication from the athletes is huge. And the tradition grew 25 years ago, where we had girls who really started to care about it. And it just goes from one group to the next.”
The Cardinals are back with another hungry team, looking to bring the sixth state volleyball championship to the Langdon area. Doing so would put them in sole possession of the most state titles in Class B; their five is currently tied with Thompson.
For as good as the Cardinals have been, they’ve never won back-to-back titles. The closest they’ve come is two championships in a three-year span (2008-2010).
Olson said the team is playing with a lot of excitement.
“They love each other. They play for each other. They bring energy to each other, and they care about each other,” he said. “It’s just fun to be around them every day. There’s a lot of good vibes in our gym, whether it’s practice or matches. And just exciting times for us.”
LA/M (11-3, 1-0) has only played one district match so far, a 3-0 win over St. John. But it played its third region contest on Thursday at Langdon Area High School, sweeping the North Border Eagles (0-9, 0-3). The Cardinals previously swept Grafton, a Class A team.
“I thought we served pretty tough tonight. We had some good float action going on our serves,” Olson said after the sweep of North Border. “It kind of set the tone for the whole match.”
Sophomore Emma Hall and freshman Mya Swanson led the Cardinals with seven and six aces, respectively.
It’s an especially young team this year. It features only one senior and two juniors.
One of the biggest early-season hurdles has been offsetting the loss of junior Aubrey Badding, who recently suffered a season-ending injury. She was one of the key players on last year’s state championship team. Before her injury, she was second on the team in kills.
“She’s one of a kind in our gym,” Olson said. “She’s one of the top players in the state.”
Replacing a player like Badding is a near-fruitless effort.
“You can’t,” Olson said. “I told the girls, ‘How are we gonna replace her?’ And the answer was, ‘You cannot.’ … The way to replace a big loss like that and try to do the best you can is everybody has to step up. That’s what happened last year. Everybody stepped up. … I think what our girls have done is they’re taking it as a challenge to get better as a team.”
Sophomore middle blocker Taya Feist has stepped up in a bigger role. Against North Border, she was second on the team in kills with eight. She’s now third on the team in kills for the season.
The leading attacker is freshman Hilary Haaven. She entered Thursday’s match with a whopping 162 kills, then added 17 more in the three-set sweep. But when she’s not hitting from the outside, she stabilizes things defensively. Her 173 digs also leads the team.
“It’s fun to have her on your team because she’s capable of making plays in all phases of the game,” Olson said.
Haaven had four kills within the first few minutes of Thursday’s match alone. She helped the Cardinals jump out to a 10-1 lead.
After LA/M’s early burst of dominance, North Border found a few holes in the front row. The Cardinals looked out of sync for a small stretch. They lost five straight points, making the first set as close as 13-9.
“Let some balls drop that we don’t normally let drop there,” Olson said. “But they’ve got some good athletes over there.”
The Cardinals got rolling again with some deep shots. They took four straight points and won the first set 25-14 — which turned out to be their worst set of the night.
They jumped out to another big lead in the second set, 10-2. Haaven continued to play her dynamic game, including a strategically placed soft hit in the corner, which got by North Border for a kill.
After six kills in the first set, she added five in the second.
“I made some errors that I could definitely clean up, but overall, I thought I played decent,” Haaven said. “Kept the energy up.”
With LA/M leading 16-8 on the scoreboard, there was a moment of confusion on the court. The refs deemed that North Border had an illegal alignment, and they adjusted the score to 17-6. The Cardinals went on to put the hammer down on the set, 25-9.
They narrowly missed another single-digit win with a 25-10 third-set victory. LA/M did, though, win the final nine points of the match. The stretch included three more kills by Haaven and Hall’s team-leading seventh ace.
“I thought we played really well,” Haaven said after the victory. “We had our moments where we went down, but overall we played pretty good.”
The lone senior, Raeleigh Ratzlaff, added two aces and nine digs on the night. Sophomore Kemi Morstad totaled four kills, 10 digs and 21 assists. The leading digger on the night was sophomore Meggy Hetletved.
“I thought we got in rhythm with our hitters pretty good,” Olson said. “We’re just trying to find that connection. We’ve kind of played around with our lineup now, especially in the last week. So it’s a work in progress.”
When it comes time for postseason play, the Cardinals have an extra tournament to get through if they want to defend their title. They’re one of nine members of the new District 4, which combines with District 3 to form Region 2.
Olson said it’s been over a decade since his team was in a district.
“It’s kind of cool. It creates a different atmosphere,” he said.
Two of the teams most likely to challenge the Cardinals come from within their district, with Benson County and New Rockford-Sheyenne. In the other district, Olson has his eye on teams like Drayton/Valley-Edinburg and Park River/Fordville-Lankin.
LA/M hosts NR-S this Thursday and Benson County on Oct. 7. The District 4 tournament will be held from Oct. 30 to Nov. 3 at Rolla High School, with the top four teams advancing to the Region 2 tournament in Devils Lake.
“Hopefully we can continue to improve and play our best at the end of the year,” Olson said.
