V-ball wins district; heads for nationals

By Michael Leek
Sports Editor

The LCC volleyball Stars became district champions Nov. 4 after dominating the NJCAA Great Lakes District A Tournament for three matches.

LCC thus qualified for the NCCAA National Tournament for the first time in college history. The Stars will go into the national tournament with a 30-3 overall record.

Nationals will take place in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, beginning Wednesday, Nov. 15.

The brackets for the tournament will be released Nov. 9 to find out who the Stars will be facing for their first-ever national tournament match.

LCC Coach Emily Quintero said the team deserves the trip to the nationals, and the results reflect the hard work the women have put in.

“We’re putting our stamp on history, I guess,” Quintero said. “They bought into the program all together. For them it probably feels like the normal work of what we put in to have a successful season, and we really excelled at it to get us to this point.”

Freshman Anna Hoch agreed.

“We worked hard during regular season and we were able to set ourselves up well for the district tournament,” Hoch said.

After the Stars’ first district win against St. Clair County Community College on Thursday, Nov. 2 at St. Clair, the Stars continued by defeating Edison State twice by 3-0 scores: once on Friday, Nov. 3 at St. Clair, and again on Saturday, Nov. 4 in Port Huron.

Quintero said her team played very well in the district tournament.

“We knew we had to be very focused and the girls were on it,” Quintero said.

In both matches against Edison State, the Stars were on fire offensively and were not lacking defensively, either.

Sophomore Alex Widner led the team offensively with 12 kills in both the first and second match against Edison State. Sophomore Ella Didion contributed 11 kills in the first match and sophomore Danika Fyan had 10 in the second one.

Togetherness has been a major focus over the season, Fyan said, and that is what helped the Stars win districts.

“We definitely had our game-objective focus, which was mainly our defense,” Fyan said. “But as a team, honestly, we just wanted to play our game and have fun doing it.”

As a freshman on a team full of sophomores, Hoch has had to work hard from the beginning.

“The pressure did kick in, even for our first game when Coach Q started me, but the constant support I had from my teammates allowed me to quickly brush off the nerves and allowed me to play how I play,” Hoch said.

Fyan said at the beginning of the season the team members knew they had a shot at winning. Quintero agreed. She said while she and the assistant coaches were assembling the team, they felt that “this may be the year.”

Now the Stars are national-tournament bound. Stay tuned to The Lookout for national tournament coverage.