CONRAD — Adversity will find BCLUW volleyball and their lofty goals for this season.

The Comets showed their ability to weather those storms and still come out on top, as champions of their home tournament played Saturday at BCLUW High School.

BCLUW, ranked fourth in Class 1A, finished the day with a 4-1 record, defeating West Marshall in the finals, 25-22, 25-20.

The Trojans provided a rude awakening earlier in the morning in pool play with a three-set victory over the Comets, 21-18, 11-21, 15-11.

“We talked prior to today’s matches about how we’re going to see adversity the rest of this season, and how we were going to handle it,” said BCLUW head coach Abby Stephenson. “Composure was the big thing. … And it was evident that we weren’t locked in to handle it the best way we could during that first West Marshall match.”

Advancing out of pool play as the Pool A runner-up after one-sided wins over Baxter and East Marshall, the Comets were lined up with Gladbrook-Reinbeck in the semifinals.

With the Rebels a potential regional final opponent later this year, it was a chance for the Comets to see how they’d measure up.

BCLUW freshman Olivia Peters helped the Comets take care of business, striking 12 kills in a 25-18, 25-15 victory over the Rebels to advance to the championship match.

“Our tempo was great, our defense was awesome and we were playing our game,” said BCLUW senior Kailan McEwen. “[Peters] is a powerful hitter. We push her to her limits and she pushes us back. She’s a great player.”

That set up a rematch with West Marshall, which had finished off a three-setter with H-L-V to get to the championship.

McEwen made her presence known early in the first set as part of the front line attacking and defending against West Marshall’s height at the net, with four kills in BCLUW’s initial push to a 16-10 lead.

Comet errors contributed to a 7-0 Trojan run for a brief West Marshall lead before Peters fired up again with three kills in a 4-0 counterpunch that led to the first-set victory after setter Sydney Anderson dumped an attack in the middle of the West Marshall defense.

“Our ball control was better within that game, which comes with staying composed,” Stephenson said. “When it feels chaotic, and it feels like things aren’t really going for us, we were able to have ball control and composure working in our favor.”

In the second set, BCLUW used a few hot streaks throughout the match to stay one step ahead of the Trojans, with McEwen and Peters landing the majority of the kills but the team also stepping up to put in five ace serves as a group to close out West Marshall.

“They’re a great team,” McEwen said. “But we feel like we should have won that first match, and it really pushed us to want to play them again. We definitely improved during the day, too.”

West Marshall also finished the day 4-1, with head coach Buffi Honeck seeing areas to improve but proud of consistent effort from the Trojans.

“Sometimes, in these Saturday tournaments, you come out a little slow, a little lagging, but they came out strong,” Honeck said. “It was really good to see us come out tough against BCL.”

Avery Evertsen and Lily Zahnd helped steer the Trojan offense on Saturday. Evertsen had six kills and four blocks in the win against BCLUW and Zahnd put down 14 kills in the win against H-L-V to reach the championship.

“It helps when we have a taller girl in all of our rotations,” Honeck said, “but give BCL credit they had a couple tall girls too that gave us some fits, but we just kept taking it to them and having these battles.”

The Trojans have performed well recently, improving to 8-2 in their last 10 matches by the end of Saturday. West Marshall’s final home game is against Saydel on Oct. 12.

“This was a great day,” Honeck said. “I’m happy for our seniors, in my time coaching we haven’t made it to the gold bracket or the championship so it was a great way for these girls to kinda come into it at the end of the season, they really pulled it all together.”

G-R ended the day with a 3-1 record. The 13th-ranked (1A) Rebels will take on 2A No. 6 Sumner-Fredericksburg in the season finale at home on Tuesday.

“We’re a team that kinda follows who we play with our tempo,” Kelley said. “It was a little slower tempo this morning so we needed to stay 100 percent mentally focused and have our energy ready to go. Our blocking’s been really good as of late and now we just need to pick up after we get those touches and pick up those things we’re struggling with before we get to regionals.”

East Marshall outlasted Collins-Maxwell to win their consolation semifinal, then pushed West Fork to the limit before falling in three sets in the consolation final.

“I just asked the girls to keep their energy up, because that’s where the effort is,” said Mustang head coach Jason Bowers. “And transitioning from offense to defense is the thing we picked up the most on these last couple of games. We didn’t kill ourselves [against Collins-Maxwell] with errors and we served really, really well and got some girls in there that don’t normally get a lot of playing time that gave us a little spark.

“We didn’t give up [against West Fork], there were times we fought back down big and they did the same, we just had to keep going after it.”