By Shannon Heaton

For the Herald

MAQUOKETA — Volleyball players can feed off of their emotions, or their opponents, or even sometimes an opponent's fans.

But being able to thrive without giving in to that emotion has been a level of play that Camanche High School teams in the recent past have struggled to reach.

On Friday night, the Indians overwhelmed Dyersville Beckman in virtually every way at the Maquoketa High School gym, dominating the Blazers in just a hair over 50 minutes, 25-11, 25-12 and 25-16, to advance to Tuesday's Class 2A Region 6 championship match. There, the state's fifth-ranked Indians (40-3) will face an opponent it has beaten twice this season in Durant (31-5) at 7 p.m., this time at North Scott High School in Eldridge.

And the way that Camanche did it — securing a school-record 40th win and giving coach Mark Cremer his first victory over a Beckman team in his tenure as the Indians' head coach — was by keeping calm.

“Our girls took a calmer, almost laid-back approach to their pre-match routine. We wanted them to do certain things that got them settled down and calm,” Cremer said. “The last couple of years, we've let kids get too fired up. We're working on controlling that pre-match routine.”

And that allowed Camanche the ability to break open a tied game in the first set (6-6) with a 10-1 run; a 6-1 run — led by three service aces and a kill from Haley Pulse — closed out the set. Beckman (14-22) generated its first lead at 2-1 in the second, but the Indians went on a 7-0 run that turned a still-close 9-6 game into a 16-6 lead. From there, the Blazers looked broken.

“When you see others (on the other team) put their heads down, you want to build on that,” senior Chelsea Moore (13 kills, nine digs) said. “You get really spirited and you want to get even more going.”

The first two sets were an exercise in misdirection. Where the Blazers attempted to take Moore and her outside hitting away, Camanche instead went middle and right-side with its kill shots. It's not the usual course of business for Moore to get her first kill 28 points into the match, but she wasted little time from that point. Neither did the Indians' servers, who racked up 14 aces — just five fewer than Beckman's kill total.

“We saw how Beckman played, where there would be empty open spaces. Our passers knew where they would spike it. I think they thought that Chelsea always would hit cross-court and we changed everything up,” setter Tiana Bark (eight kills, 21 assists) said.

But for two Camanche runs in the third set, the Blazers made a bit more of a game of it — even if they used Indians errors to do so. Still, Camanche reeled off a 6-0 run to go up by six (14-8) and a 4-0 run to finish off the match. In a couple of points that exemplified the entire match as a whole, setter Sarah Thornton (three aces, eight assists, five digs) served up two aces on shots that Beckman completely misread.

Ashtyn Dixon added seven kills and three aces, with Pulse contributing four kills and three aces and Ashley Gonzalez adding five kills.

“The biggest thing that Cascade (Camanche's quarterfinal opponent) showed us was that they had a very strong middle, and Beckman had probably one of the strongest middles we've seen all year (in senior Jennifer Boeckenstedt, who had six kills),” Cremer said. “So Cascade was incredibly beneficial preparation for us (Friday).”

And the ease with which the Indians moved into the Class 2A round of 16 has the players firmly believing in their coach.

“In this game, everything that Coach said would happen worked perfectly,” Moore said. “So we promise we're going to keep listening to him.”



CLASS 2A REGION 6 SEMIFINAL

Camanche 25-25-25,

Dyersville Beckman 11-12-16

Kills — Camanche 38 (Chelsea Moore 13, Tiana Bark 8, Ashtyn Dixon 7, Ashley Gonzalez 5, Haley Pulse 4, Sam Drury 1), Beckman 19 (Jennifer Boeckenstedt 6, Jenna Lansing 4, Jenna Keolker 3, Claire Willenberg 2, Abby Steger 2, Brittany Losche 2). Blocks — Camanche 2 (Gonzalez 1, Bark 1), Beckman 2 (Losche 1, Shannon Gallagher 1). Aces — Camanche 14 (Dixon 3, Pulse 3, Sarah Thornton 3, Moore 2, Bark 2, Gonzalez 1), Beckman 1 (Beth Klostermann 1). Assists — Camanche 34 (Bark 21, Thornton 8, Moore 3, Gonzalez 1, Pulse 1), Beckman 18 (Keolker 9, Klostermann 8, Willenbring 1). Digs — Camanche 28 (Moore 9, Thornton 5, Dixon 4, Bark 4, Gonzalez 2, Paige Decker 2, Pulse 1, Courtney Harksen 1), Beckman 22 (McKenzie Loeffelholz 9, Keolker 5, Boeckenstedt 4, Losche 2, Willenbring 1, Morgan Mergen 1).

Records — Camanche 40-3, Beckman 14-22. Next — Camanche vs. Durant (31-5) in Region 6 final, Tuesday, 7 p.m. at North Scott.