4th Seed Butler Volleyball Hosts Garden City Wednesday to Open Region Tournament

EL DORADO, Kan. – Butler volleyball is coming into postseason play white hot.

The Grizzlies (18-14, 10-6) closed regular season play on a six-game winning streak, winning 18 sets to just six from their opponents.

Butler earned the 4-seed in the Region 6 Tournament and will host 5-seed Garden City on Wednesday evening at 6 p.m. at the Power Plant

Barton won the conference championship and will be the No. 1 seed, followed by Colby, Dodge City, and the Grizzlies as the second third and fourth seeds.

The tournament format sees the top-4 seeds host opening round (quarterfinal) matchups on Wednesday. Following that the semifinals and finals will be held on Nov. 9th (Saturday) and Nov. 10th (Sunday) in Great Bend at the Barton Gym. The winner gets an automatic bid to the 2024 NJCAA Division 1 Volleyball Championships held at the Dunn Center in Clarksville, Tenn., on the campus of Austin Peay from Nov. 20-23.

The Grizzlies are 2-0 this season vs. their first round opponent, Garden City. The first matchup was in El Dorado with Butler getting a 3-0 sweep. The sophomore duo of Avery DeLong and Anja Milosevic led the Grizzly offensive attack as DeLong had a team-high 10 kills while Milosevic added a double-double of 29 assists and 14 digs. Freshman Gretta Stover added nine kills on .300 hitting. Sophomore Raven Boone led the Grizzlies with four blocks. The second matchup in Garden City was much closer as Butler came away with a 3-2 win on the road on Oct. 19th. Butler hit just .141 while Garden City hit .122 in the match. The edge came on the defensive side as Butler blocked 26 Garden attacks compared to 16 Broncbuster blocks. Sarah Sullivan led the Grizzly attack with 15 kills, 12 digs and five block assists. Anja Milosevic added 35 assists and 11 digs, Laynee Brown dug up 20 attacks while Ryann Hamilton finished with nine kills and seven block assists.

Butler ends the regular season with the third best hitting percentage (.223) out of nine KJCCC D1 schools. Garden City posted the seventh best mark (.118). Garden City has the second most total blocks in the conference (126) with Butler right behind in third (120). The Grizzlies kills per set (11.60) and service aces per set (2.05) are also third best in the league.

Individually for Butler, sophomore Sarah Sullivan enters the postseason ranked fourth in the league with 345 total kills. Freshman Ryann Hamilton ranks second with 1.14 blocks per set, Anja Milosevic leads the league with 0.61 service aces per set and is third with 7.85 assists per set.

Individually for the Broncbusters, Julia Brazil is third in the league with 3.36 kills per set while Katarina Miscevic averages 1.06 blocks per set, fourth best in the KJCCC. Vitoria Stedile leads the conference with 6.13 digs per set.

The Grizzlies have advanced past the Region 6 Quarterfinals for three straight seasons. Head coach Lisa Lechtenberg is 3-3 all-time in quarterfinal matches and has led the Grizzlies to three straight Region 6 championship match appearances including a region title in 2021.

The winner of Butler vs. Garden City will take on the winner of Barton vs. Pratt on Saturday, Nov. 9th at 4 p.m. in Great Bend.