SACRAMENTO, Calif. – St. Francis earned the No. 4 seed and will host 13th-seeded Buhach Colony for the first-round match of the 2025 Sac-Joaquin Section Division II girls' volleyball championship tournament, the section office announced Friday. Match time will be 6 p.m., with tickets available exclusively on GoFan.

The Troubadours finished the regular season with a 30-7 overall record, and finished third in the Sierra Foothill League with an 8-6 mark. The Thunder enters the postseason at 18-12, finishing second in the Central California Conference behind only undefeated El Capitan. The meeting will also mark the first meeting between the two teams in the MaxPreps era (2004 to present).

Leading St. Francis offensively is a foursome of junior pin hitters: Hailey Sutton (301 kills), Sophia Palmeri (248), Gilly Glikman (214) and Layla Hernandez (179). The senior tandem of Mercy Collier and Marissa Jensen has combined for 188 more kills in the middle, with Jensen leading all Troubies with a .358 hitting average (87-20-187). Defensively, Sutton (345) and senior libero Malia Fat (371) average better than 3.0 digs per set, while Kelsey Granner (146) and Chloe Johnson (131) average 2.1 and 1.8 per frame, respectively, despite playing only three of the six rotations.

Sutton ended the regular season with four straight double-doubles, and became the program's first player to eclipse the triple century mark in kills since Alexa Edwards posted totals of 526, 521, 572 and 464 from 2016 through 2019. Edwards went on to earn West Coast Conference Player of the Year honors and AVCA All-Region honorable mention at Pacific, setting league and conference records for career kills.

For the Thunder, 5-foot-7 senior outside hitter Taylor Martin leads her offense with 225 kills in 54 sets (4.2 average), with junior setter McKenna Hill and senior libero Lilly Wisdom tallying an impressive 518 digs between them. Martin and Wisdom also pace BCHS with 39 and 27 aces, respectively.

This is the first time since 2016 that St. Francis has been assigned to the Division II bracket. Although having an enrollment of a smaller D-II or large D-III school, the Troubadours were promoted to play in the D-I bracket after two championships and one runner-up finish at the D-II level from 2007 through 2009.

St. Francis has won 13 SJS titles in its history, with its most recent happening in 2019. Links to the SJS GoFan ticketing channel and the MaxPreps bracket are now available at GoTroubies.com.