Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – With every postseason win the stakes get a little bit higher, the matches a little more intense and the teams and players a little tighter.

Postseason wins have seemed to have the opposite affect for eighth-ranked Regina.

The longer the season goes the looser the Regals seem to play.

Regina rolled to a second consecutive postseason sweep on Monday taking down North Mahaska 25-20, 25-18, 25-21 in a Class 2A, Region 8 semifinal in Iowa City.

“We are just playing loose and having fun,” Regina coach Lauren Hansen said. “We didn’t even talk about today being a regional semifinal. We just said, ‘it’s another game, we are doing our thing’. If we keep talking about, ‘this could be our last’ we aren’t going to perform. I thought we did an execute job of just playing another match. They were loose, they were having fun.”

Reese Naeve hammered 27 kills and Caitlin Martin added 13 kills as Regina (23-14) advanced to the Region 8 title game.

Regina will face ninth-ranked Pella Christian (24-11) on Wednesday at Grinnell High School for a spot in the 2A state tournament.

Pella Christian defeated Pleasantville 25-14, 25-13, 25-13 in a Region 8 semifinal Monday.

“I am just beyond excited,” Regina sophomore libero Addison Bollier said. “I think we deserve this, we’ve worked for it this season and I think we have grown this year and now we have a real chance to do something special on Wednesday.”

Naeve and Regina got rolling early on Monday while snapping a nine-game winning streak for North Mahaska (22-2).

The junior standout had 10 kills in the opening set as Regina took control of the match nearly from the outset.

“We worked on getting the momentum early on,” Naeve said. “We feel like when we start strong that it carries through the whole match and it really helps with our energy.”

Regina took the lead for good in the opening set with a 4-0 run that featured a pair of kills from Naeve and put the Regals up 7-5.

North Mahaska cut the lead to 19-18 but Regina closed on a 6-3 spurt capped by a Naeve kill.

“Our coaches had us very prepared, we watched a lot of film,” Naeve said. “We knew that their middle (Nataliya Linder) was really good so we were ready to defend against her.”

Linder had three of her team-high 10 kills in the opening set but Regina did its best to limit the opportunities for the 6-foot-1 sophomore.

“We wanted to make sure that the first set we came out strong,” Hansen said. “We served aggressive so they couldn’t run their middle, she is phenomenal big future ahead for that kid, but they just have not seen a lot of pressure on the serve so we had to do that to give ourselves a chance and I thought we executed that perfectly.

Regina didn’t allow the WarHawks to string together runs on Monday.

North Mahaska had just five runs of 3-0 or great in the match and never scored more than four consecutive points.

“We wanted to get them out of system early so they couldn’t run (Linder), she is definitely their primary hitter and she is very good,” Bollier said. “We wanted to serve hard and get them out of system first set and that’s what we did.”

Regina never trailed in the second set and pulled away late in a 25-21 in the third set.

Ruby Greving added four kills as Regina finished with a 48-29 edge in kills.

“This is a great group of girls, we have the best team culture,” Bollier said. “I think that’s what is brining our game to the next level is we all play together and gel together really well and I think that’s why we are succeeding.”

North Mahaska         20  18  21

Regina                        25  25  25

Regina (Kills-aces-blocks)

Adalee Klein 1-0-1, Reese Naeve 27-0-0, Ella McLaughlin 0-1-0, Caitlin Martin 13-0-0, Nora Wilhelm 2-0-0, Ruby Greving 4-0-2, Leah Sickels 1-0-0, Totals 48-1-3.

Assists – Nora Wilhelm 32.

North Mahaska (Kills-aces-blocks)

Kayla Readshaw 1-0-0, Ally Livezey 0-1-0, Nataliya Linder 10-0-2, Abby Van Weelden 1-0-1, Breckyn Schilling 3-0-0, Regan Grewe 8-0-0, Kieren Perez 1-0-0, Sydney Andersen 5-0-0, Totals 29-1-3.

Assists – Kayla Readshaw 11, Carly Lake 7

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