Aberdeen Central is poised for a run at a second straight state volleyball tournament appearance.

But the ninth-seeded Golden Eagles will need to get through eighth-seeded Spearfish in Thursday night’s Class AA SoDak 16 contest to do it.

Central, which dropped its final three matches of the season (including a five-set thriller to third-ranked Sioux Falls Jefferson), comes into the match at 12-8 overall. Spearfish is 23-9, a mark that includes a 19-match win streak before the Spartans closed out the season with a 3-4 record down the stretch.

Thursday’s contest is also a rematch of a September meeting between the two squads, one that Spearfish won 3-1 back on Sept. 13.

“We went out there and lost in September,” said Central coach Jackie Bindenagel. “We just didn’t get anything to go our way. We try to find a silver lining in everything, and we’ve talked about it. This is a second chance to go out there and redeem ourselves. You don’t often get second chances, so try to take advantage of that.”

Central will also be looking to take advantage, not just of a chance at redemption, but of the growing pains it endured at the close of the regular season.

“The last three teams we played were Watertown, Roosevelt and Jefferson,” Bindenagel said. “They all have fantastic hitters, so we had to play really good defense on those nights. So we’re hoping we can play solid defense and get every aspect of our game really on point on Thursday night.”

The same could be said about Spearfish, too, however.

“I think they’ve gotten a lot better, too,” Bindenagel said. “They’re well-coached, they’re scrappy, they place the ball well. They don’t have a lot of height across the front row, but they do a lot of good things, so if we don’t play well, it will turn into a long night for us just because they can keep the ball up.”

While the Golden Eagles began the season on somewhat unfamiliar turf with several new faces both on the roster and in the starting lineup, Bindenagel said the team that will take the court on Thursday is different than the one that ventured west two months ago.

“I feel like we’ve grown a lot,” Bindenagel said. “I feel like every single kid on the court has made strides moving forward, and we’ve talked since August that November will be our best ball. I really like to think that we showed that last Thursday against Jefferson, going five with them. We felt like that was a good starting point to the postseason, even though it would have been really nice to beat Jefferson. We played well.”

Among Central’s strengths is an aggressive service game that lends itself to success even if it doesn’t show up in the box score.

“I do think that serving has been a strength,” Bindenagel said. “We tell the kids, you go back there and you are not trying to get an ace every time you serve. That’s a reckless way to go about it. We want them to have the goal to serve them out of system every single time. That’s hitting seams, dropping it short, whatever it may be, the goal is out of system.”

Central will be looking for a return trip to the state tournament, after reaching the stage last season for the first time since 2020. The Golden Eagles have not reached back-to-back tournaments since reaching 18 straight from 2001-2017.

Spearfish has not reached the state tournament since 2015, its only appearance in the 21st century.

Match time for Thursday’s match is set for 7 p.m. MST.