5A Region 1 volleyball championship: Lakeland on to state with an exclamation point

By MARK NELKE 

Sports writer 

RATHDRUM — The Lakeland Hawks got a little wake-up call Thursday. 

After a little change of mindset, the top-seeded Hawks looked wide-awake on Saturday night, dominating the second-seeded Lewiston Bengals 25-17, 25-8, 25-19 to win the 5A Region 1 volleyball championship at Hawk Court. 

“Some changes that we made, that thankfully were able to get us through,” Lakeland coach Kelsie Badger said. “We were not playing our best (Thursday). But tonight showed what kind of team we are.” 

Lakeland (21-11) advances to state Thursday through Saturday at the Mountain America Center in Idaho Falls. The Hawks, fourth at state last year, are ranked No. 1 in 5A by MaxPreps, whose rankings are used to seed the state tournaments. Lakeland will likely learn its first-round foe today, when the rankings are updated.

The best-of-3 series for the regional title began on Thursday at Lakeland with two matches. The Hawks, who lost just one set in beating Lewiston twice during league play, was stunned by the Bengals in five sets in the first match Thursday. In the second match that immediately followed, Lakeland beat Lewiston 3-1, forcing Saturday’s winner-take-all match for the region’s lone berth to state. 

"I feel on Thursday we didn’t play our own game,” said senior outside hitter Landree Simon, who had 21 kills in Saturday’s deciding match. “We knew we didn’t want it to be our last game, and we had to come out here and fight and play as a team.” 

Lakeland controlled the first set, Levesque finishing it off with a kill on a free ball on set point. 

After a decisive second set, Simon capped the third set by smashing a ball off the Lewiston block and out of bounds, sending the Hawks to state and leading to an inadvertent dogpile. 

“I think our energy changed completely (after that first match),” said senior setter Olivia Zazuetta, who had 43 assists and three aces. “Our bench had a ton of energy, and our team had a ton of energy, which is what Lewiston had (Thursday), so we put it into our game this time.” 

Lakeland had been the No. 1 seed at regionals before. But in 2021 and ‘22, the Hawks were upset by Moscow in the championship match, and stayed home from state. 

After Lewiston’s win on Thursday, Lakeland was determined not to let that happen a third time. 

“Definitely I think we overlooked them,” said senior middle blocker Ziya Munyer, the Weber State commit who had five blocks. “So coming into Saturday, we came in with a completely different mentality, and we just knew we had to prove ourselves.” 

Badger said the mindset Saturday was to play the match for the five seniors, and only two others saw the court — junior outside/right side hitter Alyssa Ryckman, and sophomore middle blocker Raygen Dutton, who played the front row when Munyer left the front row. 

“I felt like we all had the same goal of winning, and playing for each other,” said senior libero Addy Jo Hocking, who had 22 digs. “And we had real good energy tonight.” 

“Thursday was an eye-opener for us,” senior outside/right side hitter Lexi Levesque said. “We knew we didn’t want it to be our last game. We left everything out there, we went for everything with full effort, played our game, and it worked out.” 

Lewiston, which dropped from 6A to 5A this year with the new classification boundaries, finished 18-7.