For the third year in a row, the Meadowview Christian volleyball team will have a chance to play for the state championship.

The Trojans had little trouble toppling Victory Christian out of Columbus, Mississippi Tuesday in straight sets. Meadowview won 25-16, 25-17, 25-9 to clinch a spot to Oxford on Friday, where they’ll play Marshall Christian in the state quarterfinals at 4:30 p.m.

“I’m always proud of them. When they play great, it’s fun,” said Meadowview Christian coach Tim Burton. “They played pretty good. All in all they stayed in the game, and they played pretty solid the whole time.”

The Trojans only real struggles came in the opening set, where they got behind early and made a couple of uncharacteristic serving errors. Meadowview was still in control most of the way.

Alyssa Verhoff had a block at the net and Mallory Freine fooled the whole Victory team with a no-look shot at the net, where she looked one direction and then tipped the ball the opposite way.

Meadowview won seven of the last eight points in set one to seize control.

The second and third sets were much of the same. Victory kept it close for a while in the second set, pulling within 20-16 after being down seven.

Erin McIntyre had back-to-back aces and Reagan Burton had a kill to give the Trojans back the momentum.

The third set was the most one-sided of the night, with Meadowview taking an early 13-3 lead and not looking back.

“We had fun today,” Freine said. “We play better when we have fun.”

Freine, a senior, has played on the last three Meadowview teams that have reached the state tournament. She said at the beginning of the year, she had doubts about how far this team could go, just because of all the experience Meadowview had lost the last two years.

Now, she’s extremely confident in the Trojans. They’ll likely be looking to her for leadership when times get tough in Oxford.

“We started making the hero plays,” Freine said of the last two years. “We wanted to be the one that hit it over. I do that sometimes, but this year we are fixing it.”

Freine said of the biggest changes in this year’s team is Verhoff, a sophomore, that has become one of the team’s leaders. Verhoff was also on last year’s team and would like to bring home a state championship trophy this weekend.

“I can’t really tell you what’s going to happen because I can’t tell the future, but I just hope we can keep high spirits,” Verhoff said. “If not, one person can bring the whole team back up from everybody getting down.”