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The Juneau-Douglas High School volleyball team welcomes eight teams from around the state today and Saturday for the annual Juneau Invitational Volleyball Extravaganza in the JDHS main and auxiliary gyms.

The nine teams will split into three pools for today's action, in which they will battle for spots in Saturday's five-team gold and four-team silver brackets. The top teams from those brackets will then meet in a set of final title-deciding matches.

This season's JIVE features slightly fewer teams than in recent years due to the rising costs of travel, but assistant coach Dale Bontrager still expects competition to be fierce for the hosts.

"This is a great opportunity for our teams to face a lot of good competition in just a couple of days," Bontrager said. "It's one of the few opportunities these kids get to play in front of their friends and family. But playing at home doesn't guarantee anything. Everybody needs to show up to play against this field."

Division 3A squads from Craig, Haines, Cordova, Metlakatla, Sitka, Mount Edgecumbe and Petersburg join the 4A Crimson Bears and their conference rivals from Ketchikan for this year's tournament.

The Cordova squad, in particular, comes to town as the reigning 3A champions, and Mount Edgecumbe could give Juneau-Douglas some trouble thanks to a senior-laden lineup.

"Mount Edgecumbe is a very experienced team with a lot of athletes," Bontrager said. "We actually went to camp with them this summer, so we'll probably see a lot of what we do thrown back at us."

The Crimson Bears' focus in recent weeks on outside scoring has paid off as sophomore Wendy Calderwood and senior Kyra Jones have picked up their consistency.

Teams had keyed in on Juneau-Douglas' senior middle hitters Kristie Ely and Rachel Peyton early in the season to stifle the Bears' offense, but the team's overall development has helped to diversify their attacks across the net.

"It starts with the passing. We got under a lot of balls early in the season, but we didn't get them where we needed them. Now good passing lets our setters get in position and good setting lets our hitters get in a rhythm," Bontrager said. "This is such a team sport that you can't focus on one part of it without the other areas falling in line."

Overall improvement has also allowed the team to install a few new offensive sets for this weekend's competition.

JV and C team games also will be held simultaneously on Saturday afternoon.