Did The New Kids On The Block show up in class 3?

<p>Again, a little later but better than never, right? Class 3 was one of the championships we felt a lot of pressure in our picks. When we learned Heritage Christian Academy (HCA) was making the jump to Class 3 we boldly proclaimed them as our pick to win it all. It wasn’t solely on the idea they were the defending Class 2 championships. It was on the fact they played a very competitive schedule in the Kansas City region. This schedule positioned them to play bigger and more experienced teams. They took down some of those teams while only losing to two of the top teams in the state. With the expectations and possibly even some pressure, we were curious to see how it would play out. As always, here were our picks to get to the final four.</p> <p>We liked Eureka and Smoke Valley advancing out of a pool, joined by HCA and Cheney. We then rode with Eureka and HCA for all the marbles, with HCA standing alone on top. Let’s see what actually happened on championship weekend. </p> <p>The first thing to happen was Smoke Valley ran the table in their pool while Beloit was the surprise team to advance winning a 27-25 third set over Riverton after they had defeated Eureka in an earlier match. As predicted HCA and Cheney did advance out of the other pool, where Cheney also needed a 27-25 third set victory to advance. </p> <p>In semifinal number one, Cheney dropped a close first set 24-26 before roaring back in dominating fashion to win the second 25-8. They won the deciding set 25-19. A very balanced offensive attack was led by the 12 kills of sophomore Alex Bittner. Olivia Albers and Anna Martin added 9, while Campbell Hague chipped in with 8. Senior Korri Lies was all over the court in the contest with 26 digs. Senior [player_tooltip player_id="105672" first="Brooklyn" last="Wewe"] dished out 33 assists in the battle. Smoke Valley got 9 kills from Madi Tolle. </p> <p>Semifinal number two saw Heritage Christian win a tight first set -23 with great back and forth action. Beloit battled throughout the match but would drop the second set -20. The dynamic sophomore duo of [player_tooltip player_id="119708" first="Rachel" last="Van Gorp"] and [player_tooltip player_id="119704" first="Cy" last="Rae Campbell"] paced the Chargers with 15 kills between the two. Maci Hazel had 25 assists. Beloit got a strong showing offensively from a couple of their own youngsters. Sophomore [player_tooltip player_id="119714" first="Mylie" last="Brown"] and freshman Addison Budke had 17 of the teams 19 kills in the contest. </p> <p>The championship match would be a rematch from the previous days’ pool play action won by HCA, -19, -17. This match would be much closer but Cheney didn’t have enough to overcome Van Gorp and Campbell. Van Gorp would have 11 kills along with 7 from Campbell, who also hit at a .312 clip. Heritage (40-2) would win the match and back-to-back championships in two different classes with match scores of -22. Senior Jessa Rose had 11 digs in her final high school match for HCA. Bittner led Cheney (40-4) with 8 kills. </p> <p>The consolation match saw Smoke Valley capture the third-place trophy in a three-set win over Beloit. </p>