By Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

With tournaments a fixture on every prep volleyball schedule coaches and players are accustomed to long, taxing Saturdays.

Tournaments don’t come much longer or more challenging than the one-day, 14-team Mississippi Valley Conference affair set for Saturday at City High and Liberty High.

“It’s definitely always about survival,” West High coach Sanders said.

Full of perennial powers and tradition rich programs the MVC tournament has long been considered one of the best around.

This year may be the toughest top to bottom field yet.

Eight of the 14 teams enter play on Saturday ranked and seven of those teams are ranking in the top eight in their respective classes.

“Without a doubt its as strong as I’ve seen it,” Sanders said. “All four pools have two ranked teams and obviously on our side is a little stronger than the other side but it’s about who shows up.”

The MVC field features the top-ranked teams in both Class 5A and 4A in Cedar Falls and Cedar Rapids Xavier.

It also includes five of the top eight teams in Class 5A in top-ranked Cedar Falls, No. 4 Cedar Rapids Jefferson, No. 5 Linn-Mar, No. 6 Dubuque Hempstead and eighth-ranked West High.

5A No. 15 Cedar Rapids Prairie and defending 4A champion and second-ranked Dubuque Wahlert round out the ranked teams.

Pool play begins at 9 a.m. on Saturday with pools A and B at City High and pools C and D at Liberty High with the top two teams from each pool advancing to the championship bracket.

With the eight ranked teams spread evenly across the pools determined by regular season conference play it is conceivable that all eight teams that advance to the championship quarterfinals set to begin around 2 p.m. at City High are all ranked.

“There is always an upset, we beat Cedar Falls last year and I don’t know if anyone saw that coming maybe even including us,” Sanders said. “There is always a team that will sort of underperform and there are other teams that will overperform so that’s why it’s always a fun one.”

West High enters 20-12 on the season and coming off a 2-2 performance at the loaded Cedar Rapids Westside Invite last week and a sweep of Waterloo West in its MVC finale on Tuesday.

“We worked quite a few years on getting into some better tournaments,” Sanders said. “There is nothing quite like playing in these bigger tournaments like Valley or the Westside Tournament. It’s good to see a bunch of different kinds of teams but it certainly gets us ready for this Saturday more than any other Saturday I think.”

City High enters 12-14 and has won three of its last five after going 2-2 at the Bettendorf Invite last weekend with losses ranked opponents Bettendorf and Ankeny.

The Little Hawks join West High, Cedar Rapids Jefferson and Dubuque Senior in Pool A.

MVC Volleyball Tournament

Pool Assignments

Pool A

Cedar Rapids Jefferson

City High

West High

Dubuque Senior

Pool B

Cedar Falls

Linn-Mar

Cedar Rapids Washington

Waterloo West

Pool C

Dubuque Wahlert

Cedar Rapids Prairie

Waterloo East

Pool D

Dubuque Hempstead

Cedar Rapids Xavier

Cedar Rapids Kennedy