CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- For just the second time in school history, a team from The Master's will be going for an NAIA championship.
The men's volleyball team came through in a 5-set thriller against William Penn (IA) University 25-21, 26-28, 17-25, 25-18, 15-13 to earn the berth in Saturday's championship.
The Mustangs will play the No. 7-seed Georgetown (KY) Tigers for the 2024 NAIA Men's Volleyball Championship.
But the road to the national championship match was paved with pot holes and speed bumps.
After winning the first set, TMU (26-2) dropped a very close second set and then found themselves on the wrong end of the momentum swing in the third, losing the set by eight points. For a team that averages 12.9 kills per set, the Mustangs produced only nine in the third and committed seven hitting errors for a .061 hitting percentage.
On top of that, for a team used to seeing nearly two aces per set, only two had been produced through the first three sets.
Head Coach
Jared Goldberg knew something had to change in order to get that elusive momentum back on the Mustangs' shoulders.
"We changed our mentality to 'just go for it and just go rip,' and in that fourth set being down 2-1, I just put in the most aggressive serving lineup and just told everyone to just go for it," Goldberg said. "William Penn was passing very well, [but with our aggressive serves], that finally broke a little bit open and really made the difference in that match. All of our serving, but
Cole Oliver in particular, was the difference."
Oliver finished with four aces in the match.
But it wasn't just the serving. Only twice before has The Master's men's volleyball team been down 2-1 in a match. Once they came back and got the win, but once they did not.
"I think it was the first time we realized that our season was on the line," said Outside Hitter/Libero
Diego Perez. "I think every other game we always had it in the back of our heads that there's always more opportunities to come back. But this time it was our time to lock in. We know we've been in tight situations before and we have that trust and that deep love with each other, so we just looked at each other and said, 'it's time to lock in,' and we turned it on."
TMU hit .478 in that fourth set, with 13 kills against just two errors, to win by seven.
Then with momentum back on their side, the Mustangs won the first four points of the decisive fifth set and looked to be in control. But the Statesmen, playing in front of the biggest crowd of the tournament with most there to support them, came back and tied it at 9-9. The Master's won the next two points before WPU got three of the next four to once again tie it at 12-12.
But after a Mustangs timeout,
Will Avera and Oliver had back-to-back kills to bring it to match point. Two plays later
Isaac Seltzer crowned the match with his team-high 14th kill of the match and the Mustangs were celebrating.
"It means a lot," Perez said when asked what the win means to him. "This is my last year playing indoor volleyball and it's such a blessing to do it with Patrick [Paragas]. We've been to five national championships together [in club volleyball] and we've won five, all as non-believers. And now it's such a blessing to do it again with him and we are both regenerate born-again and doing it with Christ this time. It's just the perfect way to end my indoor career."
Behind Seltzer's 14 kills was
Braden Van Groningen with 12 and both Perez and Avera with 11. Paragas had 53 assists, two shy of his career high. Avera led the team with four blocks, giving him exactly 100 on the season, extending his record.
Now this men's volleyball team will look to do what no other team in the more than 60 years of athletic competition at The Master's has been able to do -- bring home an NAIA championship.
The championship match against No. 7 Georgetown can be seen on ESPN3 Saturday starting at 3 p.m. PT.
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