Comet volleyball team begins first week of practice after busy summer

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

CHARLES CITY — With such little time to prepare for their openers, high school fall sport teams are often forced to hit the ground running when the first official day and week of practice begins.

But even with that said first day and week of practice starting this week for the Charles City volleyball team, the Comets may be approaching their mid-season stride earlier than most others when considering all the work they already put in this summer.

The Comets participated in three summer camps, including those at Johnston High School, Wartburg College and the University of Northwestern at Saint Paul.

“The Northwestern camp was a two-day camp where the girls stayed overnight and got to experience the college experience,” Comet head coach Sue Hoefer said.

Hoefer has ties to Northwestern as her daughter, Jackie, continued her volleyball career there after helping Charles City win its most-recent team state championship in 2012.

The Comets are coming off a winning season from last fall where they were 29-7 overall and 8-2 in the Northeast Iowa Conference, finishing second in league standings to New Hampton.

The Comets were stopped in the Class 4A-Region 4 semifinals by Waverly-Shell Rock, a team they had beaten twice during the regular season and NEIC Tournament. Charles City was up 2 sets to 1 in the best-of-five match, but playing without All-NEIC First Team middle hitter Keely Collins who went down with an ankle injury during the NEIC tourney, the Comets lost a pair of extended sets in order which ended their season.

It was an especially tough loss considering that it appeared the Comets had won the fifth set to advance to the regional finals only to have the winning point nullified due to a hand-in-the-net violation that photo and video evidence of the play seemed to disprove.

The Comets have lost Collins to graduation as well as All-NEIC First Team outside Emma Miller. They also lost All-NEIC Second Teamer Keely Anderegg, who led the Comets with 56 service aces last season as a sophomore, but has since transferred to Osage.

But Charles City does return All-NEIC First Team setter Sofia Parrott, who — like Anderegg — also had an outstanding sophomore season while leading the Comets in assists (707), placing just outside the Top 50 in the state in that category.

The Comets also return one of their most all-round and experienced players in senior Mya Rimrod, who was an All-NEIC Second Team selection but you could have made a case for her being on the First Team as she led the Comets in digs (224) while reaching and exceeding a career total of 500 digs, and was second on the team in both kills (212) and service aces (40).

Senior Anya Ruzicka will return as the team’s libero/defensive specialist, and senior Jadyn Van Horn will return for her pending fourth letter-winning season in front and above the net as she was second on the team in blocks (40) and recorded 110 kills last season.

“As you can see, we’re not like a lot of teams we play that are going to impress you with their size,” Hoefer said. “As usual, we’re not that tall as we all seem to be about the same size, but we’re a very athletic team.”

This is Hoefer’s second stint as Charles City’s head volleyball coach. After leading the Comets to the 2016 State Volleyball Championships, Hoefer stepped down to watch and support her other daughter, Katie, when she continued her volleyball career in college. Hoefer returned in 2020 to co-coach the team with Andie Olson when an 11th-hour vacancy needed to be filled.

For this school season, Hoefer will be a varsity head coach for two programs at Charles City as she agreed to take over the Comet girls basketball team in the wake of co-coaches Dave Rottinghaus and Rusty Rogotzke stepping down.

Rottinghaus, a former Comet standout and NCAA Division I player at the University of Wyoming, has taken over the Charles City boys basketball program after former Comet head coach Ben Klapperich accepted the athletic director position at Clear Lake.

While trying to leave the program in a better place than when he and Rogotzke took over, Rottinghaus helped appoint teacher/coach Luke Anderson to run a middle school/feeder girls basketball program at Charles City while possibly moving up in the near future to take over the varsity program.

“I’m like a lot of people around here who want to see our girls basketball program get better,” Hoefer said. “Now that we finally have a feeder program in place, hopefully we can fix what is broken.”

While witnessing success on the volleyball court repeatedly supersede that on the girls basketball court at Charles City, you couldn’t help but notice that many of the volleyball players — whose skills and athleticism would transition nicely in basketball — never went out for the latter sport.

When asked about the possibility of more athletes going out for both sports with her now being the head coach for both programs, Hoefer said, “I hope so.”

“Over the summer we had two youth camps — one for volleyball and another for basketball,” she said. “We had a package where you could sign up for both of them, and we had quite a few girls do both. So maybe that’s a good sign.”