After sweeping top-seeded Tampa in the semifinals on Friday, the Metropolitan State-Denver volleyball team outlasted second-seeded Concordia (St. Paul) in four sets in the championship match on Saturday in Sioux Falls to claim its first Division II national championship.
Megan Hagar had 18 kills and Brooke Gennerman had 16 kills to pace the fourth-seeded Roadrunners to a 25-22, 25-20, 20-25, 25-21 victory over the Golden Bears. The victory was the 23rd consecutive for the Roadrunners (32-3), who handed Tampa its first loss of the season on Friday.
Trailing 2-0, the Golden Bears (31-6), who were going for their record 10th D-II title, battled back in the third set. The Golden Bears led 5-1 before the Roadrunners rallied to take a 15-12 lead. After tying the score 15-15, the Golden Bears outscored the Roadrunners 10-5 down the stretch to force a fourth game.
The Roadrunners raced to a 13-5 lead in the fourth set, but Concordia responded with a 12-4 run to pull within 19-17. The Roadrunners forged a 22-19 lead, but kills by Kelsey Cooper and Makenna Nold got the Golden Bears within 22-21. The Roadrunners closed out the match with the final three points, two on kills by Hagar.
“Congrats to Metro State,” Concordia coach Brady Starkey told reporters in Sioux Falls. “They did a great job and they came to play. They battled through of a bunch of adversity.”
The Roadrunners were without their top hitter, senior Annika Heif, who was injured in the second set of their quarterfinal match on Thursday. Heif, who led the Roadrunners with 403 kills, did not play in the final two matches.
“Losing your [top] player, to go down like that, and then being able to battle back, just shows the integrity and grit their team had,” Starkey said. “Just really impressive by them. They deserved it.
“They were the aggressive team, pretty much the whole night and the whole tournament to be honest. They handled everybody really well, including us. We battled nerves pretty through the entire match. We battled hard and fought but they were too much when we weren’t really in sync. A lot of that was because of what they were doing.”
