BEATRICE - Anchored by excellent serving and strong defense and buoyed by big runs in the middle of both sets, #2-seed Falls City Sacred Heart (7-7) cruised past #1-seed Humboldt-Table Rock-Steinauer (9-5) in straight sets [25-16, 25-12] to capture the 2025 MUDECAS Volleyball Tournament title in the B Division. 

The Titans had defeated the Irish twice this month already, one 2-0 win and one 2-1 win, but on Thursday night inside Southeast Community College's Truman Center, the site of the 60th meeting between these two schools since 2007, FCSH swiftly ensured that they would not fall to HTRS for the third time in less than two weeks. 

Trailing 3-1 to start the match, the Irish ripped off their first big run of the game, scoring five in a row and eight out of nine to grab the lead and force HTRS to call a timeout. The Titans responded by scoring five straight of their own to immediately tie the set at nine apiece, but the Irish seized full control from there, ripped off the next 11 points to go up 20-9 despite a second timeout from HTRS. 

The Titans pieced together one more response, a 7-2 overall run to climb to within 22-16. Sacred Heart took a timeout, sensing HTRS was starting to find its footing, and promptly scored the final three points out of the timeout to wrap up set one with a 25-16 win. 

Set two was dead even to start, and neither team led by more than two until the Irish went in front 10-6, prompting an HTRS timeout with FCSH seemingly on the brink of starting a run. The Titans won the first point out of the timeout but promptly gave the Irish the side out, and they never looked back. 

A 7-3 Sacred Heart run after HTRS' first timeout gave the second-seeded Irish some separation, and after HTRS called its second timeout trailing 18-10, FCSH never allowed them a foothold in the match. The Irish scored seven of the final nine points and fittingly wrapped up the match with a service ace, closing out the championship with a 25-12 win in set two.

The serving and passing game is an often overlooked element in this sport, but in this game it was Sacred Heart's greatest separator. FCSH served extremely well as a team, with Dorothy Crouse and Emersyn Courtney contributing most of the aces, and the Irish continually knocked the Titans off kilter in the receiving game. Top HTRS hitter Elie Bstandig normally averages five kills per set, one of the top marks in D1, but she only had about five kills in the match, and the rest of her teammates had about that many combined. Hallie Jones and Daycee Witt carried the offense for Sacred Heart, and combined with the strong team service game the Irish needed no luck to avenge their two earlier losses to the Titans and close out this week with a MUDECAS championship.