Cissna Park girls volleyball coach Josh Landon has spent a truly countless amount of hours working in the gym with his Timberwolves team. He’s had hundreds more discussions with them before, during and after games.

But at times like when the Timberwolves were playing as well as they did in Tuesday’s road sweep of Vermilion Valley Conference rival Watseka, sometimes he just has to sit back and watch.

“You give them a little bit of feedback, but nothing to where they have to overthink the game,” Landon said. “Mady (Marcott) gets behind the line and rattles off three or four in a row, we get some touches and timely digs, and then Addison (Lucht) puts a few away to give us a timely spark,then Sophie (Duis) came along and finished it off. It was just a great, great run to put it away.”

After some early back-and-forth play with the Warriors, the Timberwolves (30-1, 11-0 Vermilion Valley Conference) stormed ahead to win the first set 25-14 before taking control and never letting go of a 25-9 second set to confirm the program’s fifth straight 30-win season and 12th ever.

For senior outside hitter Josie Neukomm, who had five digs and four kills Tuesday, the thought of ending her prep career with a career sweep of one of their biggest rivals made her short on words but big on happiness.

“It’s amazing,” Neukomm said with a skyscraper-sized smile.

They met some stiff competition out of the gate, with the hosts seizing leads of 1-0, 4-3 and 5-4, but after a misfired Warriors hit went out of bounds to give the Timberwolves a 6-5 lead, they never trailed for the rest of the night.

Outside hitter Addison Lucht and middle hitter Sophie Duis, the other two-thirds of the Timberwolves’ core of four-year starters along with Neukomm, tied for a team-high seven kills. They were primarily set up by the sophomore tandem of Mady Marcott (10 assists) and Ella Schluter (eight assists) while Lucht and Kendyl Neukomm had a pair of aces apiece, the latter of whom also had a team-high eight digs.

But the Timberwolves got contributions from everywhere on Tuesday, as evidenced by the run they went on in the first set that turned a 9-7 lead into 20-10, including a 5-0 run with Kendyl Neukomm at the service line in which she recorded her pair of aces.

“It was just a great job of mixing,” Landon said. “(The Warriors) were going to focus on the outside, then Marina Day came in with a few big swings in the middle and some nice blocks, Ava Henrichs on the right side. If you can get timely kills out of them it just makes you that much more effective.”

With a home game against Iroquois West Thursday separating the Timberwolves from the start of regional play next week and their journey for a third straight trip to the IHSA Class 1A State Finals, Josie Neukomm said that while they’ll look to fine tune some things ahead of next week, she’s also trying to make the most of her stretch run with her teammates.

“There’s a couple things we need to work on, but really it’s about soaking in the last few moments with these girls,” she said. “This is an incredible team and I’m just fortunate to be surrounded by great players and people in general.”

The Warriors, who end the regular season with a home game against Milford Thursday, got three blocks and two kills from Thayren Rigsby, three assists and two blocks from Christa Holohan, 10 digs from Noelle Schroeder, four assists from Liana Navas and an ace apiece from Navas and Addissen Ulitzsch.

At 20-10 (7-3), the Warriors have had a successful season of their own, one that’s included winning last month’s Watseka Invite and getting head coach Krista Pufahl her 500th career win earlier in the season. If they can navigate next week’s Grant Park Regional, where they’re the top seed, they’ll play sectional volleyball at home in two weeks.

“This season has been fun and also full of different challenges, but we are going to continue to fight through the hard things and hope we can put together a nice postseason run,” Pufahl said. “We have got to get better every day so we can get back to our own gym in the postseason and give it all we have, leave everything we got on that floor.”