Cardinals finish 13th at 40-team Sprawl tournament

By Reagan Hoverman

First-year head coach Tracey Budworth of the Prescott Cardinals volleyball team is looking forward to a successful 2022 season, which will be centered around returning talent and depth from last season’s roster.

Although the Cardinals are 4-6 to start the year, Budworth remains confident, as she has spent the first two weeks of the season experimenting with different rotations, positional changes and play calling techniques to determine what will be best for this year’s Cardinals roster.

That experimentation continued on Friday, Aug. 26, and Saturday, Aug. 27, at the annual UW-Stout Sprawl tournament in Menomonie, where Prescott finished the 40-team tournament in a four-way tie for 13th place after a loss to Stanley-Boyd. Budworth spoke about roster experimentation and growth among the team.

“I tried some new things, new rotations against St. Croix Falls and we’re getting stronger every time we’re on the court,” Budworth said. “I think we’re starting to figure out what combinations are going to work best for our success.”

Prescott drew challenging opponents at the sprawl including St. Croix Falls, a team that is regularly on the brink of going to state, and Stanley-Boyd, a team that is 5-2 this season and finished last year 22-6 and went to the sectional final.

Despite playing notoriously strong teams like St. Croix Falls, Stanley-Boyd and River Falls, the Cardinals are right around .500 this season. Budworth believes that the record will improve as the season gets into Middle Border Conference action. She spoke about her roster and what the strengths will be this season.

“We’ve got a really strong team this year and we hardly lost anyone from last year,” Budworth said. “We’re really deep this year on the bench. I had (sophomore) Kaitlyn Stuart come in when Katrina (Budworth) was struggling a little bit and she did great. (Senior) Campbell Hunt stepped in for a while at right hitter and was fantastic with four kills.

We’ve got strengths, even off the bench.” While depth is going to be a major part of the season, perhaps no player is more important to the Cardinals than junior middle Reese Ptacek, who has been a standout player since reaching the high school varsity level.

Ptacek, who committed this summer to play Division 1 volleyball at the University of Kansas, has been a centerpiece for Tracey Budworth’s squad this season. She spoke about getting Ptacek involved and what she brings to the floor for the Cardinals.

“We are working in some new offensive plays that – how do you not work it to the D1 player?” Budworth said. “We also know that all of our competition is looking for us to work it into her. We’re working on doing some things that pull some blockers and come close to balancing things out. Natalie (Ptacek) is getting stronger all the time. Katrina (Budworth) is working up there too.”

Tracey Budworth will continue to work on getting Reese Ptacek scoring opportunities while simultaneously using the attention the defense gives her to Prescott’s advantage to generate additional opportunities for other players.

According to Tracey Budworth, serving and serve receive was an issue for the team last year, and improving in those two areas will be critical to team success this season. Budworth spoke about those two aspects of the team.

“We’re judging this year a lot on serving, where we struggled last year,” Budworth said. “We’ve got a team goal of 90% or better for our serving percentage. We still need to work on our serve receive. That was an area of weakness last year and it continues to be a weakness this year. There will be a lot of that going on (at practice) next week.”

Although there have been some miscues throughout the first two weeks of the season, the team continues to gain more experience playing together and improving. Budworth spoke about gelling together as a team as the season progresses.

“We already mesh together well, but I think we’re going to get to a point where we know each other so well that everyone will know what works,” Budworth said. “I think we have a really strong squad right now and I think we’re almost there.”

Prescott is slated to begin Middle Border Conference play on Thursday, Sept. 15, at home against Baldwin-Woodville. Last sea- son, the Blackhawks finished the season with a 5-1 record in the MBC and second in the overall standings, trailing only Saint Croix Central (6-0). Prescott finished the 2021 season with a 2-3 record in the Middle Border.

Up next for the Cardinals is a series of games at a quad in New Richmond on Tuesday, Sept. 6. That event is slated to begin at 5 p.m.