The experience of winning a national championship is one that will be remembered for years to come.

The University of Wisconsin women’s club volleyball team did just that this past April, sweeping Cal Poly in a best-of three games series to conclude a three-day tournament in Kansas City, Mo.

The team won nine out of the 10 matches it played, with the lone loss coming in the first day of play against California-Berkeley.

The national title capped off a thrilling two-game stretch for Wisconsin, who experienced its most heated match in the semifinals against its bitter rival, Marquette. MU had beaten up UW in the recent past, but the Badgers finally delivered payback.

“We played them once last year and once this year at the same place, their place, same court, championship game of the tournament, lost both times in three games,” said Rachel Prince, a sophomore right side hitter. “So it felt really great to get to nationals and beat them.”

Nothing like a monkey-off-your-back win against a rival to prepare a team for a national title game.

“I think everybody was pretty jacked up,” senior Katelyn Vara said. “We wanted [the championship] really bad. We had just come out of the game against Marquette, who is one of our biggest rivals. We have some pretty bad blood with Marquette, so beating them in the semifinal was huge for us. That really lit a fire, and I pretty much don’t think that anybody was going to beat us in the final because we were really jacked up. Going in we were fired up and excited. We wanted to win really bad.”

From watching Cal Poly play earlier in the tournament, Wisconsin knew Cal Poly was not playing like the team that won nationals last year.

In the final game of the best-of-three series, a 25-11 pummeling of Cal Poly, the Badgers knew the game was theirs.

“I think we knew we had it in the bag then,” Vara said. “But we didn’t stop playing until the very last point. We were like, ‘Oh shit, we are going to win nationals.'”

The team only played in four tournaments this semester, and the Badgers started off well by winning the Big Ten tournament and following that up with a convincing performance at Minnesota.

But the road to a national title wouldn’t be so easy for Wisconsin. The Badgers had a disappointing outing at Las Vegas, tying for ninth place, but were able to rebound before the national tournament just three weeks later.

The Badgers excel at blocking, and their title can be attributed to the team’s polishing the skill during the final weeks of practice.

“The last day of nationals we really performed our best,” said, Kirstin Cho, a senior outside hitter. “We definitely ended on a high note with nationals.”

The team chemistry was a main reason the team achieved as much as it did.

The differences in the personalities between the girls on the team provided a useful connection. Some girls are quieter; others are more outgoing. Together, they blended into a team that worked hard to achieve a championship.

And things aren’t expected to change much next year. Even with many seniors graduating, the team is hoping to have players from the B team, or incoming freshmen, step up and make strides to fill gaps.

“The girls that are coming back are really good, and now that they have a national title under their belt, I think that experience will help,” Vara said. “The way that we practice at the end of the season will be a really great learning tool for them to bring to the team next year. They have a good shot at being good again next season.”

The younger players on the team also wanted to win for the seniors. They had to go through a few years of rebuilding, and the team decided this had to be the year to win the national title.

Vara believes the seniors could not leave in a better way.

“Ending this season like this for a bunch of the seniors was obviously the best way to end it,” she said. “Taking away everything that we have learned throughout all of the years we have played, and then the things, the friendships and the things that we learned from the girls that we played with are all going to be things we can take with us for the rest of our lives.”