BOZEMAN — Trading shots, digs, blocks and whatever else Bozeman Gallatin and Bozeman could throw at each other for more than five hours Saturday, the Class AA state volleyball championship ended in a final flurry.
Gallatin, the top-ranked team in the final regular-season coaches’ poll, won six of the last seven points of the second championship match to claim the school’s first volleyball title in a slugfest of a day for the Raptors and No. 3 Hawks at Worthington Arena.
Bozeman, which reached the championship round by virtue of a five-set win over Billings Senior in the morning’s third-place match, forced the if-necessary championship match by constantly digging themselves out of a hole in a 22-25, 25-21, 24-26, 25-18,15-11 win over the Raptors in the first title match.
After a 30-minute break before the second championship match, needed because the loss was the Raptors’ first in the double-elimination format, it was Gallatin’s turn to come from behind. The Raptors won the second championship match 25-22, 12-25, 18-25, 25-23, 15-8.
Add it all up and incredibly the Hawks (27-6) won more points on the day, 214-196. But it was the Raptors (28-2) and their Kansas State-bound middle hitter Cadence Lundgren gleefully thrusting the championship trophy high into the air as the victorious players screamed at the top of their lungs.
“We kind of talked about that extra mental piece with this group of believing and really competing and wanting it really, really bad,” Gallatin coach Erika Gustavsen said. “I think that really helped push us in that fourth and fifth set to kind of overcome and settle in and kind of gain that relief back. At the end of the day, too, we just made some really big plays when we needed to.”
Gallatin’s lead in the 10th and final set of the championship round was just 9-7 when a kill by Emma Hartman pushed the Raptors’ lead to three. A Lundgren tip put Gallatin up 11-7 before a block by Bozeman’s Addison Steinke stemmed the tide.
But only temporarily. A Bozeman hitting error, another Lundgren kill and a Kennedy Varda block set up match point at 14-8. Another Bozeman error sent the Raptors into rapture.
“I’ve been with this group forever, so it’s just a good ending,” said Hammond, one of six seniors for Gallatin, which first opened its doors for the 2020-21 school year.
The Hawks were left holding the second-place trophy for the second year in a row. But Bozeman coach Devin Dynan could only praise her team for not holding anything back.
The Hawks played three matches on the day, and all three went the full five sets.
“We started at 10 o’clock in the morning and didn’t get done until 5:15, and they didn’t let up once,” Dynan said. “We just started to run out of gas a little bit. I could not be more proud of the effort they put up. That was pretty incredible.
“I mean, what a day. This is what you want Saturday at the state tournament to look like, right? We gave it everything we had.”
“That was a lot of really, really good volleyball,” said Gustavsen, who won state volleyball and girls basketball championships in 2015-16 while she coached at Bozeman. “And you know, you’ve got to give both teams a lot of credit. To battle back and forth and gut things out was a really, really awesome thing I’m sure for people to watch.
“It was a little stressful for me, I’m going to be honest with you. I would have loved to have done it a little easier than that, but I think this will go down as one of the better state championship games that there’s been.”
