If the Presentation College volleyball program is going to change its postseason fate — or at least its fate since 2017 — the Saints will need to do something they haven’t done since 2016. Beat Dakota State.

Presentation and the Trojans will meet in the opening round of the North Star Athletic Association postseason tournament Friday in Watertown, and for the Saints, the matchup represents a bevvy of opportunity.

The Saints have not claimed a win over Dakota State since the 2016 regular season, a stretch that spans 10 matches. Nor, for that matter, has any member of the Saints squad won during the postseason.

But if the Saints are expected to view the task ahead of them as monumental or impossible, they are happy to decline. Presentation is coming off back-to-back wins over Dickinson State and Valley City State to wrap up the regular season with a 15-13 mark, its best since that 2017 season when the Saints won 20 matches.

“I was really happy with how we played this past weekend,” said Presentation coach Chelsey Albrecht. “It was nice to see us play some of our best volleyball. We knew what was on the line and we really responded and executed.”

Those wins put the Saints in a tie for the No. 5 seed in the tournament, but Presentation slipped to the No. 6 spot after the tiebreaker with Mayville State.

“They beat us in four and we beat them in five,” Albrecht said. “That’s really what it came down to.”

Which only serves to underscore how far the NSAA has come in terms of competitiveness since its inception in 2013. The league currently has two teams in the NAIA’s Top 25 poll, plus a Dakota State squad that is receiving votes.

“You really appreciate how competitive it is and you have to prepare for every match,” Albrecht said. “That’s something we’ve learned, just how well you have to prepare every time you go out there.”

And so, the Saints are doing just that, preparing. After those two big wins last weekend, Albrecht said the team’s practices have been focused and efficient.

“We’re not really doing anything different,” she said. “It’s just a matter of where are we going to be able to score points and how can we limit their points.”

Friday’s match is set for 10 a.m. at the Watertown Arena. Albrecht noted that a neutral-site match and an out-of-the-ordinary match time is just the setting for the Saints to pull off the win.

“We’ve just got to go back on our side and work on the things we can control and be competitors the entire match,” she said.