With three volleyball teams ranked in the top five in the state, if you said the Loogootee Regional is the toughest Class A regional being played Saturday, you would probably be correct.

No. 5 Springs Valley (26-5) will play Lanesville (15-14) at 10 a.m. with No. 1 Trinity Lutheran (28-4) and No. 4 Loogootee (25-7) to follow. The winners play at 7 p.m. for the right to advance to either the Jasper or Columbus East semistate the following Saturday.

Trinity coach Faith Wilder-Newland said it will definitely take two good matches by her team to bring home the trophy.

“Usually, the winner of our regional wins the semistate and ends up going to state,” she said.

Trinity won the regional in 2019, and Loogootee won the regional last year.

Trinity defeated Loogootee 25-23, 25-15, 25-14 in the Jack Butcher Arena on Aug. 31.

“I think the big key is just to be relaxed, physically relaxed and not to be nervous,” Wilder-Newland said. “We’ve been there before, and we know what they want to do. We just have to play our game. We’ve been very consistent all year, and we just have to play the way we’ve played.”

That includes serving aggressive, playing good defense and controlling the net.

Bailey Tabeling leads the Cougars in attack kills with 357, Stella Kleffman leads in aces with 54, Kamzi Gross tops the team in digs with 523, Addison Darlage tops the team in assists with 1,016 and Ruthie Bingham has five solo blocks and 20 assist blocks.

“Serving aggressively is important, try to make it more difficult to get the ball to the hitter who they want to set and maybe generate some points off our serves,” Wilder-Newland said.

She said the Cougars are able to serve to the zone that she signals to them to hit.

“We’ve been working on it all year, and we’ve really gotten good at hitting specific zones of the court, so that helps a lot,” she said. “It’s not just for this match. It’s something that we’ve emphasized all along. We just have to go out and execute.”

Kylie VanHoy, a 5-foot-10 senior, leads the Lions in kills with 288 and blocks with 10 solos and eight assists, is third in aces with 51 and third in digs with 203.

“I don’t know if we can actually control her,” Wilder-Newland said. “I think we’re going to have to try to slow her down and dig her some and just not let the other people beat us, try to go at their weaknesses, which is what we normally try to do. We need to channel the ball into our defense by putting up a solid block. We may not block it to the floor, but by getting a solid block where the ball goes where we want it to go is helpful.”

Several of the Cougars have reached milestones this season. Gross has topped the 2,000 mark in digs, Bingham and Tabeling both went over 500 career kills during the season and Darlage topped the 1,000 mark in assists.

Wilder-Newland feels the Cougars are prepared to face their regional opponents as Trinity played several Class 4A teams during the season.

Trinity’s losses were to 4A teams Seymour, Providence and Terre Haute South and to 2A Tecumseh. None of those schools won sectionals.

During the final week of the regular season, the Cougars took down 4A schools Floyd Central and New Albany. Floyd Central won the Providence Sectional.

She said playing that schedule has helped a lot.

“Playing Floyd Central is a lot more physical. They are taller than a lot of the teams we’ve played, and they were just relentless coming at us, hitting good shots and hard. We could not let up for a second,” she said. “Each set was so close, so that focus over a long match, I think, is going to be what’s important.”

Bingham beating Floyd Central was amazing.

“They all thought we were a lower team, and we came out and we were better than them because they all overlooked us. Getting to go in and just beat them feels really good,” she said.

Wins like that give the Cougars hope going into the regional, she said.

”I hope it doesn’t make us too (overconfident),” she said. “That’s what we’re trying to stay away from, but getting to go in and beat those teams feels really nice. It shows that we can push through and win.”

Trinity takes a 19-match win streak to Loogootee.

“I think the schedule has helped us a lot playing these very high, competitive teams because we get used to bigger teams playing us and us being underdogs and having to prove what a 1A school is made of,” Kleffman said. “So when we go into tournament time, it makes you feel better. It gives us more confidence that we played against these 4A schools that hit hard against us and served tough at us, so it’s not a big shocker when we go and play teams like Loogootee, who is good at serve receive and passing.”

Wilder-Newland said she’s proud of the seniors and the job they’ve done in leading.

”This team is as good as it is because of them, because they’ve worked so hard and wanted it so badly,” she said. “Ruthie is a big believer in conditioning, and the other kids have bought in and worked hard in the weight room all year and actually want to lift weights. They ask me if we’re going to because they actually want to. That’s special. You lift weights to get stronger and minimize injuries.”