The high school league is officially sponsoring boys volleyball for the first time this season, but Minnesota’s brand of volleyball is hardly for beginners. And the cream has risen to the top for the first state tournament.

That was on full display on Wednesday at the University of St. Thomas, where two club-fed powers — No. 2 seed Eastview and No. 3 seed Rogers — ran into one another in the semifinals.

After dropping the first set, Rogers ran the table to advance 22-25, 25-22, 25-23, 25-19. But it was far from easy.

Between them, the teams had dropped only 20 sets all season. The Royals (27-1) haven’t lost a match since dropping their season opener to St. Michael-Albertville.

Senior Grant Anderson had game-highs of 20 kills and 45 total attacks, and junior teammate Owen Pierson added 13 kills and 30 total attacks as the Royals advanced to Thursday afternoon’s championship game against Eden Prairie, which beat Spring Lake Park 19-25, 25-13, 25-16 and 25-15.

It was an impressive display of power from the two outside hitters.

“One of my favorite things is just to hit the ball as hard as I can,” Pierson said.

Sometimes that’s hard to do in a tight match for fear of making an error. Not so for Pierson.

“I don’t really know how to explain it,” he said. “It’s just like I go up to jump and my mind’s just blank. All I have in there is to hit the ball hard and get a kill.”

Collin Nathan, a junior with a big left-hand swing, had six of his 15 kills in the first set to help put Eastview (28-4) up early. Runs were few and far between, and leads changed hands in each set.

“Games like those, it’s so hard to build momentum for yourself, so it’s all about keeping a level head and, when they get going, try to find ways to bring them back down to normalcy,” Nathan said. “I think they did a little bit better job of just staying consistent — hyped up, energized and just being on the attack. We were kind of on the defense a little bit.”

The Lightning will play Spring Lake Park on Thursday for third place.

“Obviously, it stings to lose and not go to the championship game,” Eastview outside hitter Owen Kunisaki said. “There wasn’t anyone on our team that wasn’t trying his best; they just executed a little better than we did today.”