CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- The trophy her team carted out of the U.S. Cellular Center here on Saturday says the Mustangs of Mount Vernon are Iowa’s Class 2A state volleyball champs.

However, it isn’t a stretch to say Coach Shirley Ryan’s team may be as strong as any squad in any enrollment division.

Capping off a 43-1 season, Mount Vernon needed only 50 minutes to dispatch upstart Sheldon in a three-game state championship sweep, prevailing 25-8, 25-14 and 25-9.

The title came in the silver anniversary season of the Mustangs’ one previous volleyball title, a 1984 group that was also coached by Ryan, a 36-year veteran at a Cedar Rapids-area school with a rich athletic tradition.

Ryan’s team was playing for a championship for the third year in a row, but this was their first 2A final after runner-up finishes in Class 3A the last two years (bowing to Bishop Heelan in 2007 and Marion a year ago).

“They’re juniors now, last year they were sophomores,’’ said Ryan, who’ll undoubtedly have next year’s preseason 2A title favorite with six juniors in this year’s eight-player rotation. “They have one more year of experience and they have improved so much.’’

Ryan’s team will probably have at least four girls continue with volleyball in college, starting with all-tournament captain Ali Stark, who shared team honors Saturday with nine kills.

Stark, a 6-1 junior, has given a verbal commitment to Illinois after fielding offers from many of the nation’s elite programs. Brianna Strong, a 6-2 senior, signed Wednesday with Northern Colorado while 6-1 junior Courtney Kintzel plans to follow an older sister, Shelby, to Northern Iowa.

Amanda Platte, a 6-foot junior who added another nine kills for the towering Mustangs, is still undecided but already has scholarship offers.

It all added up to a youthful crew that narrowly missed a rare perfect season, losing a 2-0 semifinal to Iowa City West at Cedar Rapids Jefferson’s Westside Invitational in mid-October. The Mustangs also notched an earlier 2-0 win over West, which was No. 2 in the final Class 4A rankings and lost a close battle with Ankeny in Saturday’s big-school final.

“I knew it would take a valiant effort to be able to compete with them,’’ said Michele Hoogers, a Sheldon native who is 87-16 in three seasons as head coach at her alma mater. “We’d had two tough matches here, so that made it tougher.’’

The Orabs, winding up 38-3, had reached the final with wins over third-ranked Dike-New Hartford and No. 2 Hull Western Christian, claiming both of those matches in four games after dropping the first set either time.

None of that was lost on Ryan, who graciously praised the runners-up, a team making their school’s first trip to state since their only previous visit in 1976.

“We had so much respect for that Sheldon team and what they did to get here,’’ said Ryan. “We talked about what a great heart they had and we got down to barebones fundamentals.’’

What Ryan didn’t appear to know was that Sheldon star Elizabeth Ihnen, named to the all-tournament team, was playing on a badly pulled hamstring. The 5-10 senior suffered the injury in the Dike-New Hartford match on Thursday and then aggravated it considerably in Friday’s win over Western.

“It was really bad,’’ said one of the senior twins whose brother, Josh, has cracked the University of Nebraska wrestling lineup as a redshirt freshman 184-pounder. “It was keeping me from doing a lot of things.’’

Indeed, Elizabeth was limited to just four kills (her team managed only 11 while committing 28 errors) and still finished as the 2A tourney leader with 39, one more than teammate Kellie Goedken, a 6-foot sophomore.

“This was not the way you want to end, knowing you didn’t play well,’’ said Hoogers. “But we had 38 wins (school record) and made the state tournament. That’s not too bad.’’

“Our last goal was to make the championship match of every tournament we were in,’’ said Elizabeth Ihnen, who graduates along with her twin sister, Rachel. “We made the championship of the state tournament. I don’t think I could have had more fun.’’

Besides Strong, Mount Vernon’s only other senior regular was defensive specialist Karly Cochrane, who anchored three winning relays for a Mount Vernon-Lisbon team that won the Class 3A girls state track title last spring. Cochrane’s father, John, is a former Sioux City North athlete who is now the athletic director at Cornell College in Mount Vernon.

Also garnering all-tournament laurels was Abby Horstman of Western Christian, which would have been playing in its ninth straight title match if not for the semifinal loss to Sheldon.