Cyclones Ready To Take On Sandhills In National Tournament

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) -- The St. Cloud Technical and Community College volleyball team is heading to the national tournament this week. The NJCAA Division III tournament will be played in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, from Thursday through Saturday.

Cyclones Head Coach Heidi Smith says her roster is made up of all players from Central Minnesota, with eight sophomores and four first-year players. She says when she recruits players, she's looking for specific traits.

Their number one job is to be great teammates.  I think that brings in a lot of good people.  For people where that's not important to them, this isn't the program for them, and that's okay.  That's one of the reasons why we've been so successful.  In the 14 years that I've been here, we've only not made the region tournament twice.

Smith says she's hoping an intentionally difficult regular season schedule will pay off.

We went to two Division II tournaments and played a lot of high-level volleyball.  We played close to 10 matches against nationally ranked teams.  Our record isn't super great; we're 17 and 14.  I was actually a little worried we wouldn't get the big because I made our schedule so strong.

The #12 seeded Cyclones will face #5 seed Sandhills, North Carolina, in their first round of the tournament on Thursday at 3:00 p.m. There are 16 teams in the tournament.

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This is the first appearance in the national tournament for the Cyclones since 2017.