Ankeny just keeps on rolling

CEDAR RAPIDS - An interesting tete-a-tete broke out between student sections Wednesday afternoon at the state volleyball tournament.

You had kids from Cedar Rapids Kennedy chanting "Let's go Waukee! Let's go Waukee!" Correspondingly, you had Waukee students chanting "Let's go Kennedy! Let's go Kennedy!"

The schools weren't playing each other. It was more a dig, pun intended, at Waukee's opponent.

When you win as much as the Ankeny Hawkettes do, people tend to root against you.

"You can't let that get to you," said Ankeny outside hitter Maddie Manning, after her team's three-game whitewash of Waukee in Class 4A first-rounder. "You just have to use that as motivation, I think. We just want to prove everybody wrong. You just want to keep going and show them what you're made of."

Ankeny (29-8), which plays Iowa City High (39-3) in a semifinal Friday afternoon at 1:30, is making its 10th-consecutive trip to state, including titles in 2004, 2005, 2008 and 2009. The Hawkettes lost five starters from last season's 4A runner-up team, but just continue to win.

These teams split a pair of matches in the regular season, but this one was all Ankeny: 25-16, 25-12 and 25-22.

"I thought we performed quite well," said Ankeny Coach Dave Whims. "We had a week to prepare, now the rest of the games, we won't."

Megan Ballenger led the way with 17 kills for Ankeny. Manning had 11 digs. The Hawkettes had a significant kill advantage of 43-24.

"This is a young team," Whims said. "We graduated 11 from last year, so it's a whole different thing. But they did an excellent job of staying calm and under control. They played aggressively, but under control."

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