Photo by Jake Przytarski Minneota’s McKenzie Tolk returns a serve during Saturday’s Section 3A championship game at SMSU. The Vikings won the match 3-0.

MARSHALL - In 2010, the Minneota volleyball team began its decade-long reign of dominance in Section 3A with a championship win over Windom. In 2019, the Vikings are closing out the decade in the same way they started it, as section champions.

On Saturday, top-seeded Minneota capped off its pristine run through the section tournament with another three-set sweep, this time over fellow No. 1 seed Adrian, to advance to the Class A state tournament.

The Vikings will be making their third-straight trip to the state tournament in 2019 after finishing runner-up in 2017 and champions in 2018. Though the makeup of this year’s team will be a much different than in year’s past, coach Hayley Fruin said all of the players have had some form of experience at the big stage.

“The nice thing is almost this whole group was a part of that team last year,” said Fruin. “Either they were playing, on the bench or they were there as a manager. That helps because they sort of experience it. They don’t obviously get the experience as a player on the court, but we’ve got enough kids on our team that have been up there in that big environment.”

Fruin will look for some of the veteran players to help calm the nerves of some of the team’s newer members prior to their first match on Thursday.

“On Thursday it’s just important that the veteran players kind of keep them calm and let them know kind of what’s to be expected when you’re there and hopefully we can start out strong,” said Fruin. “Thursday I’m sure the nerves will start but then come Friday hopefully we can play loose from there.”

The Vikings battled through some nerves to open set one of their section championship match against Adrian as the Dragon capitalized on some costly errors early on to take a 4-1 lead.

Needing to regroup, Fruin called a timeout and got the team back on track by stressing the need for them to play loose.

“I don’t know if it was the nerves that kind of got the best of us,” said Fruin. “To start that set (we) had a few too many errors but then called a timeout, we kind of all just relaxed and just said to play your own game. Just play loose and things just went alot better from there after that timeout.”

Minneota was able to right the ship afterwards by getting balls in system, which allowed the setters to find the open hitters. The result was a 13-3 stretch that gave the Vikings a 14-7 lead.

“We defended really great and got balls in system which helped our setters out tremendously,” said Fruin. “They always had everybody open to set the ball to. I thought our setters did a great job finding the right player at the right time.”

The Vikings remained in control down the stretch and went on to cruise to a 25-13 victory in the first set.

In set two, Minneota put together its most convicing set-win by jumping out to a 8-4 lead that grew to 19-6 following an 11-2 run. With their hitters continuing to dominate up front, the Vikings took set two 25-10.

Fruin was pleased with the contributions made by multiple Vikings hitters.

“We always kind of expect that out of them (Natalee Rolbiecki, Morgan Hennen and Abby Hennen) but it’s really nice when Abby Rost and Abby Frie get involved in there,” said Fruin.

“Abby Frie’s been running that slide-ball and she’s been improving every day on it and Abby Rost’s been getting some kills tonight too so it’s nice when you see everybody kind of stepping up there game and coming in and mixing around their shots and getting some kills.”

In the third and final set, the Vikings put the Dragons away for good by taking a 6-2 lead following a kill by Frie, and kept rolling with a 13-8 run that extended their advantage to nine points with the score 19-10. Minneota went on to win the set 25-14 for a 3-0 match-victory.

Minneota (30-3) earned the No. 1 overall seed in the Class A tournament and will open up competition with a quarterfinals match against Greenway on Thursday at 1 p.m. at the Xcel Energy Center.

Veteran leader Morgan Hennen expects the team to do well if they can find a way to combat some of the early nerves that comes with being a younger team on the big stage.

“This time’s a little different because we’re not a veteran squad like we used to be but after we get all the nerves down I think that we’ll do pretty well,” said Hennen.