Seward Releases Volleyball Schedule

The Seward County Lady Saints Volleyball team will have a new look with 11 newcomers to the roster in 2015 and their 2015 schedule will look quite different as well as released officially this morning.

Seward has 39 scheduled matches against 28 different teams in 2015 including a number of matches against 2014 NJCAA National Tournament teams. The Lady Saints will open their 2015 season in Roswell, New Mexico at the New Mexico Military Invitational. Seward will take on Pima to begin their 2015 campaign on Friday, August 21st followed by matchups with Eastern Arizona, South Mountain, before taking on the host Broncos, a National Tournament team a season ago, to wrap up the weekend in the desert.

The Lady Saints will open their Jayhawk West slate with the top two teams in the league from a year ago as they travel on the road to Colby and Hutchinson to wrap up August and begin September.

Seward then jumps back into non-conference action in Prescott, Arizona where they will again take on South Mountain and New Mexico Military as well as Copper State foes in Central Arizona and Yavapai.

The Lady Saints will have to wait all the way until September 10th to play their first matches in the friendly confines of the Greenhouse when they host a three match home stand against Dodge City, Garden City, and Pratt over the next six days.

The gals in green make another long journey, this time North to Torrington, Wyoming and Scottsbluff, Nebraska to participate in the Wyo-Braska Shootout once again on the weekend of September 18-19. It will be a stiff test for the young Lady Saints as three of their four matches will come against 25+ win teams from 2014 including wrapping up the weekend with Western Wyoming who was ranked in the NJCAA Top 10 in the final two polls of last season.

Seward will then host a tournament of its own, welcoming four different teams to the Greenhouse for round robin action on September 25-26. The Lady Saints will kick off the tournament with a Jayhawk West match against Butler and will take on Otero, Lamar, and Clarendon in their other three contests.

The Lady Saints will face their most trying weekend of the regular season on October 2-3 when they take part in the Tyler Invitational in Texas. Seward will open the weekend with Panola who finished 2014 at 26-7 overall and then will go toe to toe with the 2013 and 2014 NJCAA National Champion Blinn Buccaneers Friday night. Things won’t lighten up on Saturday as they battle Paris and then the host Tyler Apaches who have finished in the top 10 at the NJCAA National Tournament in each of the past three seasons.

The Lady Saints will get back into Jayhawk West action after their trip to the Lone Star State as they play five straight conference matches over the next two weeks. Highlighting the stretch is an October 7th match with rival Hutchinson in the Greenhouse at 6:30 pm.

In their final regular season tournament of the season the Lady Saints travel to Hillsborough, Missouri where they will play against another strong field of competitors. In their first match they will take on the host Jefferson Vikings, a 20 win team from last season. In their second match they will play fellow Region VI member Johnson County who spent the entire 2014 season ranked in the NJCAA Division II top 15. On Saturday they will see another perennial National Championship contender in Missouri State-West Plains who finished 7th at the 2014 Big Dance and their final match of the weekend will come against Illinois Central who finished 7th in last year’s Division II National Tournament.

Seward plays its final Jayhawk West road match of the season on the road at Cloud County before returning home to wrap up their conference schedule against Barton on Sophomore Night on October 29th.

The Lady Saints will then get ready for the single elimination Region VI Tournament action on November 7th with a bid to the NJCAA National Tournament on the line.

Roy Allen