Chasing a championship where volleyball flourishes
Top-ranked Northwestern College is after its first NAIA title, which would also be the first for a team from Iowa
Update: Northwestern was eliminated from the tournament on Friday.
Since 2008, the Tyson Event Center in Sioux City has played host to the NAIA Women’s Volleyball Championship. It’s a location that totally makes sense: northwest Iowa is a hotbed of the sport.
Yet despite the national tournament being in Iowa teams’ back yard, a championship has eluded those from the Hawkeye State. When the tournament begins on Wednesday, the nation’s top-ranked team hopes to change its, and the state’s, fortunes.
Undefeated Northwestern College, a small school of 1,700 students in Orange City, brings a 31-0 record into the tournament that will be held 40 miles south of its campus. The Red Raiders were the national runner-up last season and are in excellent position to bring the first NAIA title to Iowa.
“We have a pretty good fan following, so it's pretty nice having that close by where people can come and support for the games,” said Kyle Van Den Bosch, in his 20th year as the Red Raiders’ coach. “We stay down there the whole time, so it kind of feels like you're a little further away than Sioux City, and the girls can enjoy the whole experience.”
Northwestern lost last season’s championship match in five sets to Indiana Wesleyan. Three players who were named to the all-tournament team returned for Northwestern, Jazlyn Douma, Alysen Dexter and Zavyr Metzger.
Yet they haven’t carried the weight of the championship loss with them this season, Van Den Bosch said.
“It’s never felt like pressure,” he said. “They enjoy each other. They practice hard. They're a pretty relaxed group. And then when it's time to compete, they compete as hard as they can and kind of see where it lands.”
It has landed well for the Red Raiders this season. They’ve had 23 three-set sweeps and had four first-team picks for all-Great Plains Athletic Conference honors: Douma, an outside hitter who was also the league’s player of the year for the second year in a row; Metzger, a middle blocker who was also the conference co-defender of the year; four-time first-team pick Dexter, an outside hitter from Urbandale who attended Des Moines Christian; and outside hitter Savone Sterk.
Douma was particularly key in the Red Raiders’ conference tournament title match. She had 33 kills in a five-set victory over Concordia (Nebraska).
“She’s just so skilled in so many areas,” Van Den Bosch said. “She scores a lot of points offensively, just hits the ball with so much velocity and has a really good touch. She’s a really skilled blocker, she can really control that side of the court. And she’s one of our primary passers and digs pretty well. She’s had a really good year in a lot of areas.”
Douma is a hometown Orange City athlete, having played at MOC-Floyd Valley. Metzger is also a northwest Iowa athlete who played at West Lyon, not far from the borders of South Dakota and Minnesota. Nine of the 16 Raiders are Iowans, with the rest of the roster mostly made up of players from South Dakota, Nebraska or Minnesota.
Northwest Iowa is fertile ground for the small colleges there to find players. In addition to Northwestern, Dordt (in Sioux Center, 16 miles away) has twice played in the NAIA title game (2016-17) and Morningside (in Sioux City) lost in the first round of this year.
The area creates high school powers, too. Western Christian of Hull, 16 miles from Orange City, has won 14 state titles and has played in 42 state tournaments. Sioux City Bishop Heelan, this season’s Class 4A champion, has three other state titles. Unity Christian in Orange City has won five state titles.
“The parents enjoy the game,” Van Den Bosch said of the volleyball culture in the northwest corner of the state. “They start their daughters pretty young playing it, and the schools do a good job of just allowing the girls to develop at their pace.”
Because of the strength of play in the area, some high school athletes have gone on to play in Division I. Two former Western Christian athletes, Nancy (Meendering) Metcalf and Lisa (Reitsma) Rautenberg, were two-time all-Americans at national power Nebraska and Metcalf was a 2004 Olympian. Others are drawn to nearby Christian colleges such as Northwestern or Dordt.
For Van Den Bosch, recruiting is a matter of finding athletes who can play at a top level in NAIA, which he compares the best teams to those in NCAA Division II. They also need to be good enough athletes to develop or change positions from high school and want to attend a school like Northwestern.
“They want to maybe play at our level but would rather go to a smaller private Christian college,” Van Den Bosch said. “And there's a lot of girls that want volleyball to be part of the [college] experience, but not the whole experience.”
Family connections help, too. Setter Liv Reitsma is from Nebraska but is the niece of former Western Christian star Lisa (Reitsma) Rautenberg. Savone Sterk, from Lynden, Wash., is the daughter of former Western Christian and Northwestern volleyball and track star Vonda (Velgersdyk) Sterk.
And it was a family connection that brought Van Den Bosch to volleyball. His father, Tom, began the Western Christian program and led the team to four of its state titles before becoming coach at Dordt. He had a 464-112 record there before retiring in 2010.
“I was kind of the gym rat kid that would just kind of hang around and watch a little bit,” said Kyle Van Den Bosch, whose record at Northwestern is 555-147. “Then I started playing it a little bit more in the summertime and just tried to learn as much as I could about the game.”
While still a senior in college, at Dordt, Van Den Bosch took over his dad’s former high school team for a year before working as a high school PE teacher and coach. He became Northwestern’s coach in 2005, and had to face his dad’s Dordt team.
“It was not always the easiest on my mom, that's for sure,” he said. “Playing against each other wasn't as hard. Recruiting was maybe a little bit tougher.”
The NAIA tournament has a different structure than the NCAA tournament. There are two days of pool play with eight pools of three teams. The top team in each pool will advance to the quarterfinals that begin on Friday. The title game is Monday, Dec. 10.
The tournament will be streamed live on the Urban Edge Network.
Northern Iowa heads to NCAA tournament
Northern Iowa earned it 26th NCAA volleyball tournament bid Sunday night, and the Panthers will head to Louisville to play Illinois on Friday. The match will be televised, likely on ESPN+.
The Panthers got the No. 8 seed and with a victory, they’d face the winner between top-seeded Louisville and Chicago State. The Panthers were swept by the Cardinals on Sept. 14.
The trip to Louisville will be a family reunion for the Petersens. UNI is coached by Bobbi Petersen, whose daughter Payton is a Louisville freshman. Payton’s twin sister, Jadyn, is a freshman for the Panthers and taking a redshirt year this season.
While there will be no Division I tournament games in Iowa, across the river in Omaha No. 2-seeded Creighton will host a first/second round. The Bluejays play South Dakota on Thursday. If they win, they’d play the winner of the Ole Miss-Florida State match on Saturday.
The full NCAA Division I bracket.
Earlier this season: In volleyball, Northern Iowa has killed it for 50 years
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Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. She’s a past winner of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Mel Greenberg Award for her coverage of women’s basketball. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese and Basketball: Stories From a Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”
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