Spencer, Ia (Northwest Iowa Now) – With the 2024-2025 Iowa High School Sports season winding down, we will start a series this next couple of weeks talking about some of the best teams from the past sports season in the KICD 9-County Area.

We will start with Cherokee Volleyball.

A Senior class of Keylee Gregg, Laney Wolfswinkel, and Elise Anderson led the charge for a still pretty young Braves group in general.

The Braves first big checkpoint of the season was the Unity Christian Varsity Volleyball Tournament, featuring several big names from around Northwest Iowa.

At that tournament, Cherokee faced quite a bit of high-level competition, going 3-1 with their only loss to that of 2A powerhouse Hinton.

The Braves came out of that Tournament on fire, rattling off 7 straight wins, including some nice ones against Sergeant Bluff-Luton and Emmetsburg. That win streak was stopped by Boyden-Hull/Rock Valley who beat Cherokee at their home Tournament 2-1.

Cherokee came backs strong, only dropping 1 set to their next 9 opponents, and locking down the Lakes Conference Title. The Braves would outscore Conference opponents 12-0 in those matches.

There was a rough patch in mid-October where they lost 4 of 10 matches, including 2 against Western Christian out of Hull.

The two Western Christian versus Cherokee matches were incredible. The first one came in the Kooima Varilek Classic that was hosted by the Wolfpack. The Braves lost to the Wolfpack 2-1 that day and came back to give them one of the great games to watch this past year. Western got up 1-0 with a 25-19 win in set 1, but Cherokee bounced back to score a 25-19 win in the second game to tie it at 1. The Braves took a 2-1 lead after the 3rd set, winning another one 25-19 and only a win away from a big late October upset. Western Christian would win the last two though, 25-22 and 15-8.

The IGHSAU gave Cherokee a #2 seed in Class 3A Region 6. The Braves handled their first opponent in Eagle Grove 3-0, outscoring the Eagles 52-22 across the 3 sets.

Cherokee was tested pretty well in the Regional Semifinals by the #3 seed Unity Christian of Orange City. Although taking the match 3 games to 1, Unity had hung around within 5 in the first 3 sets and took set 3 25-23. The Braves closed out the Knights though in the 4th set, dominating in a 25-12 win.

The run would end in the Regional Final though against Sioux Center. Cherokee had taken the first set 25-22 before dropping the 2nd 25-21. It was all Sioux Center in set 3 for a 25-14 drubbing. Set 4 was Sioux Centers in a slight edge 25-23. This wrapped up the Lakes Conference Champions season at 28-8.

Deidra Doeden ended up as the #2 blocker in the State of Iowa with 116. Senior Laney Wolfswinkel was 4th in Class 3A Serve Aces at 67. The IGHSAU final ranking had Cherokee as the #9 ranked team in Class 3A.