BISMARCK In the fifth set of Saturday afternoon’s North Dakota Division B state championship at the Bismarck Event Center, Hilary Haaven brought down a kill that set top-seeded Langdon Area-Munich’s players and fans ablaze. The star freshman calmly trotted to her roaring teammates and offered encouragement, no clear emotion on her face. Never mind the fact that it was her third consecutive kill, and had forced second-seeded Medina-Pingree-Buchanan to take a timeout. Or that the Cardinals, once down 2-0, had stormed back with two straight set wins and were now in firm control of momentum in the fifth. Haaven has been there, done that. As has Langdon Area-Munich. The Cardinals closed out the fifth set to defeat the Thunder 3-2 (17-25, 23-25, 25-19, 25-16, 15-12), winning their second-straight state championship. “Reverse sweeps are always an awesome thing to watch, so it’s exciting that it happened in the championship,” sophomore Emma Hall said. It’s the program’s sixth state title, but it’s the first time Langdon Area-Munich has repeated. “We’ve seen other teams do it,” head coach Rich Olson said. “It does (feel different). We’ve had a chance at it a few times, we’ve never been able to do that. And so to do it in this fashion is just amazing, and I’m so proud.” Haaven led the Cardinals with 23 kills and 39 digs. “She’s a rare type,” Olson said. “You don’t see too many 14-year-olds that can play with that type of calmness and poise. And she just believes in herself. She’s put a lot of time into it. She’s a competitor, fierce competitor, and yet she’s a great teammate and a great leader for us.” Haaven earned a spot on the Division B All-Tournament team alongside teammates Kemi Morstad and Taya Feist. Mortstad racked up 39 assists in the title game, and Feist continued to show off her excellent defense at the net with 12 blocks. Hall also stepped up in the title match, offering 13 kills as Langdon Area-Munich’s secondary scorer. “She really was a shot maker for us,” Olson said. “When Aubrey Badding went down with the Achilles injury and she was out for the season, Emma Hall needed to kind of step into her spot as a middle. And it took her while, because she had never played middle before, so give her a lot of credit. She learned the position, and she became kind of a shot maker for us and came up with some huge kills.” Each of Langdon Area-Munich’s three tournament wins came in five sets. So when the Cardinals got down early, Olson told his players to calm down and just focus on the next set. “We’ve been down before,” Olson said. “I didn’t see any panic in anybody’s eyes, just like, hey, we need to play better. They were playing better than we were. They deserved to be up 2-0. But I just told them going into the third set, we’ve got to get one. Just got to get one set. Maybe the momentum will switch a little bit there, and that’s what happened.” Haaven said: “It’s a new set. Every point is different, one point at a time. You just gotta take it, don’t look ahead at all. You can’t get down after being down 2-0.” The third set was a battle until the end, but Langdon Area-Munich pulled away with a 5-1 run to win it. Again, it took a little time for the Cardinals to really find their rhythm in the fourth set. But once they did, they ran away with it. “We kind of got our serving and passing down,” Hall said. “That’s what was killing us in the first two sets. And we knew that we just had to focus with the nerves out, and just play.” Langdon Area-Munich took off on a 10-1 run for a 20-11 lead in the fourth, and fended off a comeback attempt from the Thunder to force a fifth. “We’re a team that tends to go on a run,” Olson said. “That tends to be how we gain an advantage over the other team, is we get our servers going on a run. And what wasn’t happening, all of a sudden it did, and I think psychologically, that really boosted us.” That momentum carried into the fifth, when the Cardinals leapt out to a 7-2 lead. Langdon Area-Munich will likely be a problem again next year in the chase for the Division B crown. Raeleigh Ratzlaff is the only senior on the team. Most of the Cardinals’ top contributors are underclassmen. “We’re all pretty young, and we’ve been playing together for a really long time,” Hall said. “(We’ve) all been very dedicated to the sport and we work on it all year long. We have a hard offseason, so it’s good to see it pay off.”.
https://www.grandforksherald.com/sports/prep/langdon-area-munich-stuns-medina-pingree-buchanan-for-second-straight-state-championship