CORALVILLE — Both Bishop Heelan and Pella volleyball were battle-tested heading into the Class 4A Iowa high school state volleyball tournament championship match.

Bishop Heelan and Pella both played over 40 games on the season, setting them up to play through any potential adversity.

Ultimately, the biggest beneficiary of that was Bishop Heelan as it rolled to a state title sweep in three sets (25-10, 25-13 and 25-17) at Xtream Arena on Thursday afternoon. This is Bishop Heelan’s fourth state title in volleyball and the program’s first since 2007.

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“We came into the match ready to play,” senior setter Maddie LaFleur said. “We knew that we only had one game and we’re going to give it all we had, leave it on the court.”

The Crusaders opened with a dominant 25-10 in the first set. The offense was incredibly efficient behind LeFluer, who assisted on all 13 of Bishop Heelan’s kills in the set. While Ava Lloyd and Maliyah Hacker each had five kills, four different Crusaders posted kills in the set, showing LeFluer’s efficiency in distributing the ball.

In the second set, Bishop Heelan’s efficiency continued. With 14 kills in the set, the Crusaders had just four total errors in the second frame. That was in comparison to Pella’s 10, gifting the Crusaders an additional 10 tallies on the scoreboard in a set they were already dominating of offense.

Pella continued to improve throughout the matchup, but Bishop Heelan’s dominance ultimately was too much to overcome. The Crusaders rolled in the third set as well, winning it 25-17 with 17 kills among the team to cap off a dominant tournament.

In total, Lloyd and Hacker combined for 34 kills and just four errors. LaFluer had 36 of the team’s 44 assists. Between the three, they had 38 of the squads’ 59 digs.

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The second-seeded Crusaders did not concede a single set in three matches during the tournament and defeated the 2023 state champions, North Scott, along the way.

Bishop Heelan head coach Lauren Boatman pointed to the senior leadership of LaFleur and Hacker in particular for the success. Both of them came into the season intending to put the Crusaders back on top in the state of Iowa.

“I think it goes back to Maddie and Maliyah being great leaders on and off the court, keeping everybody focused all week long,” Boatman said. “It was great to see.”

Pella has a lot to be proud of this season, finishing 41-8 and making the state tournament for the first time since 2018, making the state title match in head coach Joel Allman’s first season.

“This group is just such a special group of people,” Allman said. “They spread so much light in this world and I’m glad the state got to see them up here this whole week.”

Eli McKown covers high school sports and wrestling for the Des Moines Register. Contact him at Emckown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @EMcKown23.

More than 97% of Iowa businesses anticipate raising wages in 2025, but the increases may be less than those doled out a year ago, according to an annual survey released by Palmer Group, a leading Des Moines-based employment agency.

Findings of this year’s 2025 Salary Guide show that a majority of the businesses — 78% — plan on wage increases of 3%-4%, with 14% planning on raises of 1% to 2% and 5% anticipating raises of 5% or more. Only 3% of the businesses surveyed did not plan to give raises in 2025.

The survey also shows businesses have pared back their hiring plans slightly in 2025, with 45% anticipating hiring new staff as compared to 50% a year ago.

While demand for highly skilled and experienced workers is still high, this year’s survey reflects “less chaos” in terms of businesses rapidly ratcheting up wages to attract workers, said Palmer Group Executive Vice President Chris Lorenz.

“There’s less of a bidding war,” Lorenz said. “Companies are concentrating on being who they are and attracting employees who want to work there.”

He said the number of businesses responding to the survey this year was the highest since the company started doing them in 2013. He did not have an exact number for the responses, but say it was “more than 100.”

Pay hikes rise as boomers leave workforce faster than they can be replaced

Wages and salaries have become a focal point for businesses trying to attract workers at a time when Iowa’s labor force is shrinking. Baby boomers continue to retire at a rate faster than the number of young people entering the labor force can replace them. The state’s unemployment rate remains low, at just 2.9%.

Nearly 23,000 workers have left Iowa’s labor force in the last 12 months, Palmer Group Chairman and CEO David Leto noted in the survey report.

“Unemployment rates in Iowa have dropped and are near February 2020 levels,” Leto said. “We are seeing quit rates drop in Iowa and they are now below the US average, which was not the case for the past few years. Due to all of this, skilled and experienced talent is still hard to find, and demand remains strong.”

Workforce participation rate in Iowa remains below historic levels

Iowa’s workforce participation rate was at 66.4% in September, still higher than the 65.5% in August 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the recorded low of 63.1% in January 1976. But Iowa’s workforce participation rate historically has been over 70%, including a high of 72.8% in October 2008, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While workforce participation has been going down, the total wages and salaries paid in Iowa topped $100 billion for the first time in the second quarter of 2024, according to Federal Reserve Economic Data statistics.

Companies looking to bring more workers back to office fulltime

Companies also are planning to increase the number of employees they are bringing back to the office full-time. Full-time, in-office work is planned for 38%, up from 33% last year. Still, companies also are anticipating more hybrid work accommodations at 32% compared to 25% a year ago. The amount of 100% remote workers was at less than 1% in the survey as compared to 2% fromyear.

The Des Moines metro has seen several office renovations in recent years as companies strive to make workspaces more enticing to employees.

The difficulty in finding new employees is reflected in where companies anticipate their focus to be in 2025. Employee retention at 37% remains the highest priority, but it is down from the 49% in 2024. The biggest shift was companies placing a focus on new technologies which almost doubled to 14% from 8% a year ago.

Who made the most and lest?

The survey also lists salary levels for a variety of different job titles based on experience. Ranking the highest were chief financial officers with top pay coming in at $689,400 for one with a high level of experience. The low was was $32,300 for an entry-level bank teller.

Palmer Group published the 2025 Salary Guide in collaboration with the Greater Des Moines Partnership, Central Iowa Society for Human Resource Management and the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance.

Kevin Baskins covers jobs and the economy for the Des Moines Register. Reach him at kbaskins@registermedia.com.

It’s all about the points, Iowa’s Drake Ayala said.

The returning NCAA finalist, who moved up to 133 pounds for this season, opened the season last Saturday at Oregon State with a 26-10 technical fall over Damion Elliot. Ayala gave up an early takedown, then took control of the match.

“My mentality was just to keep scoring,” Ayala said Wednesday. “Even though I get taken down once here or there, that’s fine, but if I keep scoring, that’s when good things happen.”

It was a good start to the season for Ayala, an NCAA runner-up at 125 last season who moved up a weight class. And it was an example of what he says is “wrestling like Drake Ayala.”

“Scoring a lot of points,” he said. “I mean, just pouring it on our opponent, and just having fun doing that. I’ve done that ever since I was a little kid, so there’s no need to stop now that I get to college and we have better competition.”

Iowa coach Tom Brands said he enjoys Ayala’s relentlessness on the mat.

“He just kept going,” Brands said. “Right now, in my mind, I see the Energizer Bunny, something like that. You know, keep it going. Just keep wrestling that way.”

Brands said he saw that aggressiveness as Ayala rallied from the early takedown.

“Something did go against him, he got taken down, and he got back in the match and got the tech fall,” Brands said. “Good for him. Let’s keep it going. Keep that pace.”

Ayala went 27-5 last season, getting through to the national championship match before losing 7-2 to Arizona State’s Richard Figueroa.

“I think what you saw at Oregon State, it doesn’t matter how good the guy is, it doesn’t matter how bad the guy is,” Brands said. “All that matters is Drake Ayala. Goes out and wrestles like he’s capable of doing. And when that happens, he is explosive, he is dynamic, he’s a throttler, he’s a hammer. And those are all good synonyms for dominant wrestlers.”

The aggressiveness, Ayala said, comes from having worked with three-time national champion and Olympic silver medalist Spencer Lee in practice.

“I think any time you wrestle Spencer Lee into practice, you elevate your level,” Ayala said. “So I think it’s good for me to wrestle him just to feel that. I mean, he was an Olympic silver medalist this year, so get to feel that level, you continue to improve.”

The move to 133 hasn’t affected Ayala.

“It’s still wrestling,” he said. “I can’t even really tell the difference in the weight class. I can tell in my workouts and my practices, I’m having a lot more fun and I’m focusing on the right things. So that’s a good thing for me.”

Ayala, ranked third at 133, gets #20 Tyler Knox (2-0) in Saturday’s dual against Stanford at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

“There’s nothing to take lightly,” Ayala said. “They’re a talented team, and we got to go in there. That’s the next day down on our calendar. That’s the next big thing. So we’ve got to be ready to go.”

Bonding Time

The trip to Oregon State for the 30-7 dual win featured some “goofy flights,” Ayala said, but it was a good bonding experience for the team.

Ayala told about the early wake-up call the team had on Sunday morning to head back to Iowa City.

“We had a time change (for Daylight Savings Time),” Ayala said. “So we had a time change, and then we left for the airport from the hotel at, like, 2 a.m. They knocked on our doors at 2 a.m., we left at 2:30 and then it was just all of us hanging out in the airport at 4 a.m. with each other. It was a little goofy. It was fun though.”

Tunnel Walk

Saturday’s dual will be the first at Carver-Hawkeye Arena since the construction of the new tunnel between the arena and the Goschke Family Wrestling Training Center.

The Hawkeyes will come out of the tunnel located at the south end of the arena, instead of the usual tunnel entrance at the northwest corner.

“We had media day in there, so I got to see it and stuff,” Ayala said. “And there’s lights in there. It’s cool. It’s different. It’s on the other side of the arena. So that’ll be different too.”