Photo Courtesy of Mid-Prairie CSD Social Media

The No. 8 in Class 3A Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk volleyball team begins regional play today when they host the Davis County Mustangs in the regional quarterfinals. The Hawks wrapped up a 30-8 regular season last week with South Division River Valley Conference regular season and tournament championships. Last time on the floor, the Golden Hawks won two of three on their way to finishing as runners-up at the overall RVC tournament Thursday at Maquoketa with wins over Bellevue and No. 12 Anamosa before falling in the title match to No. 3 Dyersville Beckman. Mid-Prairie comes in ranked No. 8 in the final 3A poll of the year from the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union. This season, they have 1,852 digs, most in Class 3A, 1128 kills, second in 3A, with a .319 kill efficiency, second in 3A, 1,070 assists, second in 3A and 167 blocks. Individual leaders include Jovi Evans with 530 assists and 306 kills, sixth most in 3A. Dakota Mitchell has 497 digs, third in 3A, Callie Huber’s 34 blocks are best and her .426 kill efficiency is best on the team and sixth in 3A.

Davis County is 11-25 this year, they were 4-3, fourth in the South Central Conference. They swept Cardinal last week to finish the regular season. This season the Mustangs have 948 digs, 631 kills, 579 assists, 141 blocks and a .041 kill efficiency, bottom 5 in Class 3A. Individually, Culee Smith leads with 385 assists and 11 blocks, Alistyn Lawson has 163 kills and a .111 kill efficiency, and Hayden Humphrey has 212 digs. This week, Golden Hawk co-head coach Zeb Evans joined KCII Sports to talk about the keys to the match.

Evans said, “Davis County is a little higher, slower offense, so we’ll have to adjust to that. (Lately), we’ve swung well, we’ve dug well, we need to get a little more disciplined on our block. I think our girls are ready. They’ve been preparing for this for a long time. We just tell them to go out there and do their thing. They have a routine, a system they like to do, and we let them play.”

These teams have not met since a 2022 playoff match that the Golden Hawks swept. You can hear all of the playoff action live tonight between the Golden Hawks and Mustangs on AM 1380, FM 102.5, the KCII2 App and KCIIradio.com, beginning with the Golden Hawk playoff pregame show at 6:30p.m. and first serve at seven from Tim Grady Gymnasium in Wellman.