Battle-tested Blue Valley West volleyball captures Kansas state title
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (BVM) — Blue Valley West was as prepared as any Kansas high school volleyball team could hope to be heading into the Class 6A postseason.
As a member of the Eastern Kansas League, the Jaguars played arguably the toughest competition in the state and they took their share of lumps during the regular season. They finished 9-6 against league opponents and lost seven of their first 20 matches overall, with three of those losses coming against St. James Academy (28-4), which was ranked as the No. 2 team in the state all season long. Another loss came against No. 1-ranked St. Thomas Aquinas (29-2), which went on to claim its second straight Class 5A state title.
But Blue Valley West (27-7) also proved it could beat the best in the state. Two weeks prior to losing to the 5A champs, the Jaguars became only the second team to beat Aquinas this season. The Saints’ only other loss came to the Omaha Skutt SkyHawks (35-1), who are considered to be the best high school volleyball team in the country and just won their sixth consecutive Nebraska state title. The Jaguars were also the first team to beat Class 6A state-runner up Lansing this season after the Lions had won their first 22 matches.
That Oct. 20 victory over Lansing was the fifth consecutive in what would become a 14-match winning streak that carried Blue Valley West all the way to its third state title in program history, capped by a straight-set sweep of Olathe Northwest in the Oct. 30 championship match.
“We went on quite the run at the end,” Blue Valley West head coach Jessica Horstick said. “Our early schedule was really stacked with good teams. I think that really prepared us to go into the postseason and play some other teams that maybe weren’t playing other leagues because of COVID until postseason. … We were able to use those tough matches to be able to come out on top at the end.”
It’s the Jaguars’ second state championship in six seasons under Horstick, who won a championship in her first season with Blue Valley West in 2015. The Jaguars finished as the state runner-up in 2016 and 2017 before the graduation of a talented senior class left the program in somewhat of a rebuilding mode. The Jags stumbled to 14-25 in 2018 before climbing back up to a more respectable 22-15 last year.
“That group (of six seniors) that graduated in 2018, they were our identity,” Horstick said. “They knew how to play, they knew how to compete and they wanted it so bad. I feel like the next couple years after that we really had to find ourselves because we were very young.” … There were a lot of sophomores on that team and they just weren’t ready to compete consistently, but that group is now seniors this year and they found themselves.”
And along the way, Horstick found a better understanding of what it takes for a team to reach the heights that her first group of state champions did in 2015.
“When I came in here and we won the first year it was like, ‘Alright, well, let’s do this every year,’ but obviously that can’t happen,” Horstick said. “In the end, I just think everything has to fall into place at the right time and the kids really have to get along and support each other even if they’re not on the floor all the time. … Those two teams, 2015 and 2020, I can say they loved each other. They would run through a brick wall for their teammates and I think that’s made the biggest difference.”
Perhaps the biggest difference-making factor on the court for Blue Valley West this season was the team’s balance. While Taylor Stockman led the offensive attack with a team-best 286 kills, she was by no means the only weapon at the Jaguars’ disposal. Brooke Leiker (216 kills), Kenna Holland (167 kills), Jordyn Anderson (127 kills), Alyssa Miller (103 kills, team-leading 839 assists), Ashlyn Berning (86 kills) and Shayna Mishra (76 kills) all made significant impacts when it came time to put the ball away, while Holland (team-high 69 blocks), Mishra (63 blocks), Miller (50 blocks) and Stockman (48 blocks) also provided a strong defensive presence at the net.
“I think that kind of helped us at the state tournament because the other teams we played were pretty one dimensional or they had two kids,” Horstick said. “We had weapons all across the front row and we could move it around.”
The Jags will graduate their setter in Miller and will also have to replace middle blockers Holland and Mishra and a key defensive specialist in Berit Jones (258 digs), but with Stockman, Leiker, Anderson, Berning and Morgan Colangelo (team-best 389 digs) returning next season as seniors, Blue Valley West will be in a good position to defend its title. And there’s no doubt that with the competition the battle-tested Jaguars will likely have to face again 2021, they’ll be ready for anyone.
“I think us playing in the league that we played in really served us well,” Horstick said. “It was hard when we were doing it, but once we got to the end we could really see the payoff.”
