Lisa Bluder visited West Des Monies Friday, as the Robert D. and Billie Ray Center honored her with the Pillar of Character Award for the outstanding career and historic season her team completed.

KCCI spoke one-on-one with Bluder about the future of the Hawkeyes.

“It might be a bit of a rebuilding year next year just because we did lose five seniors.

But at the same time, we have the ninth-best recruiting class in America coming in, we’re going to get some help from the transfer portal and we return a couple of starters.

Instead of Affolter and Hannah Stuelke, along with Kylie Feuerbach, who was instrumental coming off the bench for us,” Bluder said.

Bluder’s appearance comes one day after landing a highly sought-after Villanova recruit, Lucy Olsen.

Historically, Bluder has prided herself on recruiting her team directly from high school but, with five players graduating, Bluder said the portal can help her fulfill needed roles.”

(The portal) has changed our game and we have to change with it if we want to stay relevant, even though, our bread and butter is going to be the high school athlete, the person that we can really invest four years with,” Bluder said.

“Certainly when we have a certain need in the portal, we’re going to go to there and try to fill that need.”