Photo by Jake McNeill: Southwest Minnesota State right side hitter Ashley Peltier goes up for an attack during the Mustangs' 3-1 win over Augustana in Marshall on Tuesday night. The redshirt freshman had a career-high 12 kills in the match

MARSHALL — The red-hot Southwest Minnesota State University volleyball team will look to carry its early-season momentum into its Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference schedule when it heads to North Dakota this weekend. The Mustangs, ranked fifth in Division II in the latest American Volleyball Coaches Association poll, enter their conference openers a perfect 8-0 on the season and are aiming to keep the ball rolling against Minot State and UMary.

“It’s fun to get to start up conference play because… of the competition level that our league plays at,” SMSU head coach Tyler Boddy said. “We feel like we’ve done a good job through our first two weeks of the season playing some good teams and competing hard. Just trying to be ready for the grueling schedule that we have ahead of us with our league.”

The NSIC currently has five teams ranked in the top 12 of the latest AVCA poll with No. 8 Wayne State, No. 10 Concordia-St. Paul, No. 11 Minnesota Duluth and No. 12 St. Cloud State joining SMSU. Minnesota State is also receiving votes while Winona State received votes in the preseason poll.

While the conference is saturated with talent, SMSU has some leeway to ease itself into the schedule. Minot State was ranked last out of 15 teams in the preseason coaches’ poll while UMary was ranked 12th. SMSU, on the other hand, was ranked fifth. Still, they’re not taking any matches for granted.

“Having to go on that, our longest road trip, is tough in itself just having to be ready to play on the road,” Boddy said. Point-to-point, the drive from SMSU to Minot State, UMary and back is about 1,011 miles and 15.5 hours of driving without factoring in stops along the way. “We’ve been on the road for the last two weeks, so we kind of understand that, but it’s just a different environment when it’s conference play because you’re playing one match a day. Now those teams have eight matches of ours that they can watch.”

Boddy said that many teams will try to just go out and play for the first few weekends of the season, so this will be the first time this year that the Mustangs will play competition that has the data to put together a full scouting report. He added that he’s hopeful that SMSU has also been able to scout Minot State and UMary effectively as the two have been competitive against the Mustangs in the past.

Still, SMSU is a perfect 4-0 against Minot State and UMary during Boddy’s two-year tenure as head coach in Marshall. The Mustangs swept the Marauders each of the last two seasons, and they swept Minot State in 2023 after holding on for a 3-2 win over the Beavers in 2022.

During the Mustangs’ 8-0 start to this season, they swept each of their first four opponents — including West Florida, ranked No. 20 in the country at the time — and also swept their most recent opponent, Newman (Kan.). In between, they never let any of their other three opponents claim more than one game. Still, Boddy said his team has been battle-tested to some extent; he noted that each of the team’s first three sweeps had at least one game go into extra points and a handful of their other games went down to the wire.

“We had game points against us and we fought that off. I mean, we won all of those first four matches in three, but it wasn’t like we just breezed through it, and I thought that showed some determination in our group,” Boddy said. “Not giving up and trying to win those games that were tight in the end, just taking that and moving that forward. Our group is feeling confident in what we’re doing but we talked about not getting complacent with where we’re at.”

One of the question marks of this group heading into the season was its ability to fill the setter role after the graduation of two-time All-NSIC selection Alissa Bengen last year. Sydney Thein, a redshirt freshman out of MACCRAY High School, has assimilated into the role seamlessly so far with an average of 11.6 set assists per game and a peak of 52 set assists in the Mustangs’ win over Rockhurst (Mo.). 

Throughout the spring semester, Thein was diligent about connecting with the team’s hitters according to Boddy. He said that work outside of the season and the fact that she knows the team very well as a southwest Minnesota native has been a big part of why she’s fit into the rotation fast.

“Just having that relationship with our team prior to coming here and then getting to learn under our setter last year was helpful for her,” Boddy said. “She’s done a great job distributing the ball for us and finding good opportunities for hitters. Our ball control has helped her out a lot too.”

The Mustangs have excelled early in the point this year. They’ve averaged 2.1 service aces per set with 56 total aces and 51 service errors. On the serve receive, the group has allowed their opponents to serve up just 20 aces, an average of 0.7 per game, with 32 errors.

“Our team has done a good job of having six servers back-to-back that are putting a tough ball in play. I think we’ve been able to do that effectively where we’re not having one, two or three kids that are just letting them off the hook with a missed serve or lobbing a ball into play,” Boddy said. “They’ve taken that part seriously. Top to bottom, we truthfully have a good serving team in practice too, which I think has made our passers better… We have a good serving team from one to 15 on our team. It allows our passing in practice to be more competitive, having to go against those guys, so it’s not a big change going into a match because we’ve hopefully seen some tough serves in practice.”

Leah Jones and McKenzie Tolk have led the team at the service line with 11 aces each, including five and four respectively in SMSU’s last win, while Mya Krystosek, Kennedy Drake and Sydney Thein each have another eight.

While SMSU surges into conference play, their upcoming opponents have struggled. Minot State has won just one of its first seven matches — a five-set victory over Brandon University — while UMary comes in at 2-6. The Beavers have put together a .110 hitting percentage while allowing opponents to a .198 mark, while UMary has split at .152/.204. SMSU, by contrast, has a .233 hitting percentage on the year and has held its opponents to .124.

Heading into this weekend’s matchups, Boddy said that he wants to see his team continue to put that same defensive effort to work. Tolk, a junior libero, has led the team with 5.5 digs per game but it’s been a true team effort so far; Jones, an outside hitter, and Thein have averaged 3.4 and 3.3 digs per set respectively while Krystosek and Drake have each also added more than two digs per set.

A big part of the team’s defensive success so far can in part be attributed to the contributions of assistant coach Mariah Van Asperen, Boddy said. 

“We’ve worked a lot on the blocking part of the game and Mariah has really broken that down well with our blockers,” Boddy said. “Taking that part of the game more seriously and understanding how impactful that is, hopefully, will make our back-row defense a little bit easier. Just trying to be tough for teams to score against and then allowing Sydney to distribute the ball fairly evenly amongst all our hitters.”

Senior middle Emma VanHeel has already recorded seven solo blocks and 28 total blocks this season, an average of more than a block per game, while Karli Arkell and Ashley Peltier have added another 20 and 18 total blocks respectively.

Match Coverage

Live stats and video for all four matches are available online at SMSUmustangs.com. Friday’s game against Minot State in the MSU Dome is scheduled for 6 p.m. while Saturday’s tilt against the Marauders is slated for noon in the McDowell Activity Center in Bismarck, N.D.