Lakeville South assistant coach Kevin Boysen has presented Cougars players with small items prior to every postseason game this fall. Ahead of the Cougars’ section final victory over Lakeville North, it was a keychain with a target.

The reminder: As the defending state champions, you always have a target on your back.

Lakeville South outside hitter Jada Johnson (8) tries to block a shot by Roseville Area outside hitter Sam Bloomquist (1) during the Class 4A girls volleyball semifinals of the State Volleyball Tournament at Grand Casino Arena in St. Paul, Thursday, Nov. 06, 2025. Lakeville South won in 3-0 sets. (Craig Lassig / Special to the Pioneer Press)

Lakeville South has seen the best that all comers have had to offer all season. The only way to combat it was for the Cougars to play their best game, as well. Don’t back down from a challenge — take it head on.

With its back against the wall in Thursday’s Class 4A state semifinal, Roseville delivered its best blow. Trailing 2-0 in the match and 11-6 in the third set, the Raiders went on a 15-6 run to seize control and move to within four points of forcing a fourth set.

During one of Lakeville South’s timeouts amid the Raiders’ run, Boysen noted the Cougars were in control, but that they had to “bring it all” to finish the match.

That’s what they did.

Lakeville South won eight of the set’s final nine points to complete the sweep. The Cougars will get a chance to defend their title in the championship bout at 7 p.m. Saturday in St. Paul.

“We knew all season we had to work hard,” junior setter Kaelyn Bjorklund said. “Our coaches held us very accountable to always be communicating, always have energy. Because it always comes down to practice. You practice how you’re going to play. Every tournament, every game, we’ve just always brought our best. We try to excel every game.”

The Cougars delivered again Thursday. Their execution was pristine and seemed to put Roseville on its heels. The Raiders entered the semifinal as winners of 13 straight matches, but they dropped the first set, 25-12. It wasn’t until the third set that Roseville (24-8) truly resembled the team it’s been all season.

“We are so tough and gritty, and I think to start off we were so well prepared and we had a mindset, and I just think we lost a little bit of our special sauce, our oomph that makes us who we are,” Roseville coach Greg Ueland said. “We talk about responding all the time, and it just took us so long to respond.

“And then when you’re in that situation, especially against an amazing team like Lakeville South, you have to work that much harder mentally, physically and emotionally. I think that took a big toll on us. But our absolute grit, that’s who we are. I knew they would stay fighting.”

Ueland noted the fourth-seeded Raiders had to “terminate” more balls to score Thursday against Lakeville South’s daunting defense. They did so by mixing up shots at the net and cranking up the energy another notch to win more of the relentless rallies Lakeville South claimed earlier in the match.

“All of us really wanted it so bad,” Raiders junior middle blocker Sophia Gholson-Johnson said, “so we had to push that little more.”

But Lakeville South (30-3) was ready for that, as well. The top-seeded Cougars cited “really hard” practices all season as what helped prepare them for such situations in high-pressure environments.

“Now that we’re here, the work finally paid off and it’s all worth it in the end,” senior right-side hitter Jada Johnson said. “I’m glad that they take it so seriously.”

Lakeville South’s Amanda Cullen (11) celebrates after defeating Roseville Area in 3-0 sets during the Class 4A girls volleyball semifinals of the State Volleyball Tournament at Grand Casino Arena in St. Paul, Thursday, Nov. 06, 2025. (Craig Lassig / Special to the Pioneer Press)

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By MICHAEL PROBST and KIRSTEN GRIESHABER

HANAU, Germany (AP) — Police in Germany said Thursday they detained a 31-year-old man suspected of painting swastikas with his own blood on dozens of cars, some mailboxes and building facades in the central town of Hanau.

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Police spokesman Thomas Leipold said officers were alerted Wednesday night when a man reported that he noticed the shape of a swastika applied in a reddish liquid on the hood of a parked car. Police said that almost 50 cars had been defaced in a similar way.

A special test quickly revealed that the substance was human blood.

The display of Nazi emblems, including the swastika, is illegal in Germany.

On Thursday afternoon, police said, the man, a Romanian citizen whose name was not given in line with German privacy rules, was arrested at his home in Hanau, after they were tipped off by a witness.

“He was still under the strong influence of alcohol and his motive appears to be highly personal and job-related — he just snapped,” Leipold said. He added that the man had injuries that appeared to be self-inflicted.

“He is currently being examined at a psychiatric hospital,” Leipold said. He declined to give any further details in order to protect the privacy of the suspect.

The swastika is widely considered a symbol of hate that evokes the trauma of the Holocaust and the horrors of Nazi Germany. White supremacists, neo-Nazi groups and vandals have continued to use it after the end of World War II, to stoke fear and hate.

On Thursday morning, before the suspect was apprehended, the city’s Mayor Claus Kaminsky expressed shock.

Hanau was in the headlines five years ago when a German attacker shot and killed nine people with immigrant roots in a rampage at a hookah bar in the town, in one of the worst cases of domestic terrorism since World War II.

“Especially in our city, which was deeply affected by the racist attack on Feb. 19, 2020, such an act causes deep consternation,” he said, adding that the city had filed a criminal complaint, German news agency dpa reported.

“What happened here crosses every boundary of decency and humanity,” Kaminsky said. “Swastikas have no place in Hanau. We will not allow such symbols to sow fear or division.”

Grieshaber reported from Berlin.

By JOHN RABY and ERIK VERDUZCO, Associated Press

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — A jury in Virginia on Thursday awarded $10 million to a former teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student and later accused an ex-administrator in a lawsuit of ignoring repeated warnings that the child had a gun.

The jury returned its decision against Ebony Parker, a former assistant principal at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News.

Abby Zwerner was shot in January 2023 as she sat at a reading table in her first-grade classroom. She had sought $40 million against Parker in the lawsuit.

Zwerner spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, required six surgeries and does not have the full use of her left hand. A bullet narrowly missed her heart and remains in her chest.

Parker was the only defendant in the lawsuit. A judge previously dismissed the district’s superintendent and the school principal as defendants.

The shooting sent shock waves through this military shipbuilding community and the country at large, with many wondering how a child so young could gain access to a gun and shoot his teacher.

The lawsuit said Parker had a duty to protect Zwerner and others from harm after being told about the gun. Zwerner’s attorneys said Parker failed to act in the hours before the shooting after several school staff members told her that the student had a gun in his backpack.

“Who would think a 6-year-old would bring a gun to school and shoot their teacher?” Zwerner’s attorney, Diane Toscano, told the jury. “It’s Dr. Parker’s job to believe that that is possible. It’s her job to investigate it and get to the very bottom of it.”

Parker did not testify in the lawsuit. Her attorney, Daniel Hogan, had warned jurors about hindsight bias and “Monday morning quarterbacking” in the shooting.

““You will be able to judge for yourself whether or not this was foreseeable,” Hogan said. “That’s the heart of this case.

“The law knows that it is fundamentally unfair to judge another person’s decisions based on stuff that came up after the fact. The law requires you to examine people’s decisions at the time they make them.”

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The shooting occurred on the first day after the student had returned from a suspension for slamming Zwerner’s phone two days earlier.

Zwerner testified she first heard about the gun prior to class recess from a reading specialist who had been tipped off by students. The shooting occurred a few hours later. Despite her injuries, Zwerner was able to hustle her students out of the classroom. She eventually passed out in the school office.

Zwerner testified she believed that she had died that day.

“I thought I was either on my way to heaven or in heaven,” Zwerner said. “But then it all got black. And so, I then thought I wasn’t going there. And then my next memory is I see two co-workers around me and I process that I’m hurt and they’re putting pressure on where I’m hurt.”

Zwerner no longer works for the school district and has said she has no plans to teach again. She has since become a licensed cosmetologist.

Parker faces a separate criminal trial this month on eight counts of felony child neglect. Each of the counts is punishable by up to five years in prison in the event of a conviction.

The student’s mother was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and federal weapons charges. Her son told authorities he got his mother’s handgun by climbing onto a drawer to reach the top of a dresser, where the firearm was in his mom’s purse.

Raby reported from Cross Lanes, West Virginia.

By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Washington D.C. National Guard will be deployed to the nation’s capital through the end of February, according to formal orders reviewed by The Associated Press.

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The formal order, dated Nov. 4, extends the original order from Aug. 11 and says the Guard members will be in the city at least through Feb. 28. The order states the additional duty is in response to the emergency declared in August by President Donald Trump and under directions from the “Secretary of War to protect federal property and functions in the District of Columbia and to support federal and District law enforcement.”

Hundreds of National Guard troops have been in Washington since August, which launched what Trump said was a crime-fighting mission that also included the federal takeover of the local police department. That order expired in September, but the roughly 2,000 National Guard troops from D.C. and at at least eight states remain in the city, with most contingents saying they plan to withdraw by the end of November.

The D.C. National Guard is the single largest contributor of troops with 949 soldiers that make up the task force that totals 2,375 troops. West Virginia is the next largest state to contribute troops to the task force with 416 guardsmen.

Some have been armed and providing a military presence in public spaces, especially in the federal parks around the city and at subway stations as well as the Amtrak train station.

The National Guard task force appears to have spent a large portion of its time on yardwork and landscaping efforts around the nation’s capital. In an update provided in early October, task force officials boasted that troops cleared 1,150 bags of trash, spread 1,045 cubic yards of mulch, removed 50 truckloads of plant waste, cleared 7.9 miles of roadway, painted 270 feet of fencing and pruned 400 trees. Since then, most daily updates from the task force only offered new troop figures and no summaries of beautification efforts.

One segment of the D.C. Guard has worked with various neighborhoods on beautification efforts at the request of local neighborhood officials and residents.

D.C. National Guard members clean up the park around Fort Stevens Recreation Center, Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025, in Washington. News of the cleanup sparked a community debate over the presence of the Guard. (AP Photo/Gary Fields)

The presence of guard members in the city is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit, filed Sept. 4 by D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb challenging the Trump administration’s use of the National Guard in the heavily Democratic city. That lawsuit sparked filings by 45 states with 23 supporting the Trump administration and 22 aligning with Washington. The Trump administration has argued that he has full authority to deploy guard troops in Washington because he is the designated commander of the D.C. Guard.

In court papers filed by Schwalb seeking to have the guard removed from the city, the documents indicated that there were plans for the D.C. Guard to potentially remain in the city at least through next summer. U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, heard arguments Oct. 24 on Schwalb’s request but reached no decision.

It’s unclear how long the other states, which currently include Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, West Virginia, Georgia and Alabama, will keep their troops deployed to the task force in Washington. Several of the states told the AP they planned to end their deployments by Nov. 30 but indicated that also depended on whether orders were issued extending their deployments. The order does not mention the other states.