WARNER – The defending champs are ready for another run at a state championship.

The Warner Monarchs have won the past two Class B state volleyball championships, and are gearing up to make it a three-peat at this weekend’s state volleyball tournament in Rapid City.

Warner coach Kari Jung said the team has improved throughout the season and is hoping to continue to improve at the state tournament.

“Sometimes I feel like teams go in slumps, and I feel like our kids have improved throughout the season, and so we’re hoping we can continue that for one more week and keep improving through next Saturday,” Jung said.

The Monarchs have been dominant this season, winning all 37 of their matches, while surrendering just three sets. Only Parkston, Elkton-Lake Benton, and Sioux Falls Christian, all Class A schools, were able to take a set off the Monarchs. Jung said there have been two main components to the team’s success this season.

“I feel like we have a lot of balance on the offensive side and very good, quick defensive players that love their roles,” Jung said.

The offensive side begins with senior setter Ava Nilsson, who, despite dealing with injuries earlier in the season, has led the team by distributing the ball to multiple teammates such as Kyra Marcuson, Lauren Marcuson, Courtney Bjorgaard, and Kyleigh Schopp, among others.

“I think offensively, just having Ava be able to find the hot hitter and know that she has multiple weapons has really helped us,” Jung said.

Warner’s resume is not short when it comes to quality wins this season. The Monarchs have defeated several quality opponents, including several state tournament qualifiers. Those include wins over Class AA state qualifier O’Gorman, Class A qualifiers Miller (twice) and Wagner, and Class B qualifiers Faulkton Area (twice), Wolsey-Wessington, and Burke.

But perhaps the most impressive wins came against Sioux Falls Christian, the top seed entering the Class A tournament. The Monarchs not only beat the Chargers twice this season, but both victories came in the same day at the Sanford Pentagon Volleyball Invitational in late September. The Chargers are also the last team to take a set off the Monarchs.

While the numbers speak for themselves, Jung said the goal at the beginning of the season was never to go undefeated.

“I guess we never really looked at going undefeated,” Jung said. “I knew we had some very good returning athletes and a good number of seniors.”

Jung said when you pair the returning athleticism with a large number of seniors, it gives a team extra motivation during the season.

“When you have good athletes with a lot of seniors, they know it’s their last chance,” Jung said. “For most of them, they’re not going to play volleyball anymore and so they really want to go out on a strong note.”

Jung also noted that it has helped that the seniors have been good role models to the younger players, which gives the team confidence on the court.

“They’ve just been very good leaders to the younger players and so they feel very comfortable playing on the court with them,” Jung said.

The Monarchs graduated three key seniors off last year’s state championship, and although they were key contributors, several other players were able to learn from them and carry the success into this season.

“We lost seniors last year the contributed a lot, but the kids who had to step into their roles were playing opposite of them on the net often,” Jung said. “So, they learned a lot from what the three graduated seniors did and were able to step in pretty easily, so that was very helpful.”

Warner enters this year’s Class B tournament as the top seed and will take on eighth-seeded Gayville-Volin in the opening round on Thursday.

“Gayville-Volin looks, by their roster, quite young and they’re not real tall,” Jung said. “It looks like they have some good athletes on their team. They seem to serve aggressively. From what I’ve seen, they have a very strong outside hitter, and I believe their libero has some good quickness and just gets after it on defense.”

Win or lose, Warner will play a rematch with either Burke or Wolsey-Wessington in the following round. However, Jung and the Monarchs are focused on Gayville-Volin, and know it will take aggressiveness to earn the win on Thursday.

“I think we need to just start out strong, be aggressive right away,” Jung said. “If we can get them out of system, I think that will help our side because if we are playing against strong hitting because we gave them easy balls, it’s going to be a lot harder for us to defend. If we can keep them out of system with aggressive serving and aggressive hitting, then I think they’ll struggle keeping up with the pace we have. So that’s what we’re hoping.”

(Note: Other state volleyball tournament previews will be running during the next couple of days.)