Joel Friday, e-PRO

Well the first 2 games of sections went by without a hitch. The girls quickly took care of Minneapolis Edison in 3 games. Last night West Lutheran came out and looked better than Edison, but we dropped them in 3 as well. Therese was able to use all of her bench in both sets and still maintain an edge over the competition.

Thursday night the sub-section Championship will be held at West Lutheran in Plymouth. Southwest Christian will face Mayer Lutheran at 6 and Our Lady Saints will take on Heritage Christian at 8 pm. SHould be some great volleyball so be sure to come out and cheer on our Saints!

The so called redneck bottleneck will be no more after today! The construction on Highway 10 in Coon Rapids should finish up this week. The project extended the 3rd lane from Foley to Hanson Blvd. with the west bound lane becoming the Hanson exit only lane. On the eastbound side the third lane starts as Hanson traffic enters the freeway. The redneck bottleneck was formed when Highway was completed through Blaine. This allowed 3 lanes from 10, 2 lanes from Highway 47 and one lane from the 610 bridge to combine into 2 lanes in about one mile.

The bridge replacement over the single line railroad track to Duluth extended the construction from March to November. Now that the bridge is done all lanes of the new construction opened east bound today and west bound should follow soon. The usual after work still needs to be completed including striping, landscaping and the cable median.

Here are some picturs of the work zone.

This is the 4th year of the "Battle for the Paddle", this year at Crown College. The winner of this epic battle wins the MCAA conference title in Volleyball, at least that is the way it has worked out. It is actually just the final regular season game and Meadow Creek and Southwest Christian have shown up each year with no losses. Southwest won the first and last battle with Meadow Creek winning the 2nd. Meadow Creek went to state the first year and Southwest went to state last year. Let the battle begin!

The first game SW takes an early lead, something they accomplish in each game of the set. Meadow Creek had brought a bus load of fans down to the game along with their former coach and players of years past. SW being home, had a huge number of students show up for the game. The place was loud! Meadow Creek slowly creepd back into the game and took the lead by 8. Meadow Creek kept pounding the ball and SW kept answering but eventually wore down with Meadow Creek taking the first game 25-18.

In the second game again Meadow Creek had to overcome SW's early lead. This time, this game however set the tone for the match as Meadow Creek blew past them and won decisevly 25-14. The paddle seemed as if it would find its way back to Andover.

The third game was back and forth the whole way. Tied at 19, Meadow Creek called a time out and took the next 2 points. SW used a time out and clawed back to being down one at 23-22. Meadow Creek had two amazing kills to end the game completing the sweep. SW had brought a canoe and the Meadow Creek fans padled it out onto the court. Then they rushed the team and swarmed them on the bench. The paddle is back at the Creek! Way to go Lady Saints!

Both teams joined hands at the net after the game giving thanks to the Lord!

Which team is heading to state? Bring on sections and stay tuned.

Joel Friday

Wow! 1st place in the Mora invitational. The girls did a great job in winning this tournament. They quickly dispatched St Cloud Apollo, then Pillager. North Branch in the semi finals was not able to keep up with our team. Finally it was Maple Lake in the finals. The first game was won by 2 points and the battle continued into the 2nd game. That one was also 25-23 giving the Lady Saints their first tourney win of the season ad priming them for a long run to state.

Orono came to our court on Tuesday the 13th. This was senior night and the last regular season home game for our 8 seniors. The girls played them tough and took all 3 games of the set, even while mixing in the younger girls on the team.

Next uo, the "Battle for the paddle!" Let's bring the paddle home again ladies!

This is the year for Meadow Creek Saint's 8 senior Volleyball players. They have been playing together at the Varsity level since 8th grade, when they formed the first B squad in Meadow Creek's history. They just knocked off both Champlin Park and Maple Grove last week and started conference play against New Life Academy at home with a win. Here are some other highlights for the year. I will update this blog as the season progresses through the State Tourney.

The girls stunned Heritage in a blowout and probably their best played game ever. There wasn't hardly a spike that didn't go uncontested. Every spike was hard, the sets were great. Deep serves kept Heritage off balance all night and they never built up any momentum. This was Heritage's first conference loss of the year.

Bethel Showcase!

The girls started out slow and never recovered against Leroy Ostrander in the first match of the Class A Showcase at Bethel. They came out hot in this game and never looked back winning decisively in both games against Buffalo Lake Hector. Nice turnaround ladies! In the closest match of the night, our girls pulled off two 2 point victories against Bertha Hewitt. Both games came down to the wire and the girls never relented to the pressure. In a strange twist, Bertha Hewitt received the 2nd place nod over us on point differential. We ended up 3rd in the pool and play tomorrow in the lower bracket. Underwood beat us here last year and caught us flat footed in the first game. We took over in the 2nd game with a nice win to keep the match alive and then thumped Underwood 15-2 in the third game of the match. Onto the 9th place game! Again we came out a little soft in the first game and didn't start the second very either, trailing 14-8 when Therese called a timeout. We then went on to a 17-7 run to win the game. The 3rd game was close but Nevis beat us in the end. Great tourney girls! We finished 4-2 and 10th place against some very competitive teams.

Apple Valley Tourney.

The team went out and beat the first team we faced and then drew Apple Valley in the 2nd match. Apple Valley had a great attack and we never quite matched their intensity. In the 3rd game we played Minneota. We lost a close game in the first set and then lost a player to an ankle sprain in the 2nd game and didn't pick up the pace enough to keep even with thwm. The final game was against Maple Grove and we played even with them and brought it up a notch to win both games in the end to finish 7th place.

Last night we played Providence Academy and won in three. Mora tourney this weekend!

Keep up the energy girls and finish the year strong!