Before any games were played this season, Kapaun Mt. Carmel volleyball coach Heather Holavach had a simple question for her team.

“What are we here for?” Holavach asked.

She pointed up in the gymnasium where state championships are tracked at Kapaun and where the volleyball banner is empty.

“That’s why we’re here,” said Holavach, a Kapaun graduate who returned to lead her alma mater last season. “I feel like when we got here, it was, ‘Oh, you know, it’s fine if we don’t win.’ Well, it’s not fine. I played for Kapaun. I know what (winning) feels like and I want to bring that back to Kapaun volleyball.”

The Crusaders experienced that joy on Saturday when they edged Andover Central in a three-set thriller, 25-16, 21-25, 25-23, to win a Class 5A regional championship and punch their ticket to the Class 5A state tournament for the first time since 2013.

Kapaun (30-7) is projected to be the No. 7 seed at the state tournament hosted at Tony’s Pizza Events Center in Salina from Nov. 1-2.

“This is something that has been a goal for me since my freshman year,” Kapaun senior Kaitlyn Cure said. “My dream has been to make it to state and I’m so happy I get to do it with this team.”

Last season, in Holavach’s first season, Kapaun won the City League championship, but suffered the immense disappointment of losing in the first round of the regional tournament in the straight sets to a team it had defeated twice earlier in the season.

When Kapaun showed up to the regional tournament on Saturday, Holavach challenged her team to bring the energy from the start. The coach was nervous because she and her assistant, Evan Dalian, had made the last-minute decision to change Kapaun’s offensive system from a 6-2 to a 5-1 with junior McCoy Phister serving as the sole setter.

The Crusaders responded with a dominant performance in a 25-9, 25-11 win over Salina South.

“We ran a 5-1 all of last season, so we had experience with it,” Cure said. “I’m so proud of our team because we never stopped swinging once. I know it was a last-minute change, but I thought we did a really good job of adjusting and we just kept swinging away.”

That set up a championship match against an Andover Central team that was riding a high after winning an AV-CTL Division 2 title last week. The Jaguars also owned a head-to-head win over Kapaun in a clean sweep just three weeks ago.

With the season on the line, Kapaun elevated its level of play. With Phister running the show, the Crusaders found consistent offense in Mason Palace, Kamryn Kennedy, Alex Stewart and Alyssa Hammans, while Cure, Saydie Sanders and Brooklyn Milleson delivered top-notch back-row defense.

“I’m not going to lie, nothing would have surprised me,” Holavach said. “You just never know what’s going to happen. When I woke up today, the first thing I wondered was what was 5 o’clock going to look like. As a coach, you hope your best players show up and they’re in the right head space. But you just never know. I’m so proud of our girls because they were locked in today.”

Kapaun played in front for the majority of the decisive third set, but Andover Central rallied within 21-20 and 24-23. But on match point, Andover Central’s serve sailed long and Kapaun celebrated its first state berth in more than a decade.

“You just look at your teammates and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, we just did it,’” Cure said. “Everybody was running around and the student section was going crazy. It still doesn’t even feel real. It is just that amazing. It’s just so rewarding because you know all of the grind and hard work you put in this summer.”