Queens play for gold
Queens 3 Wolves 2
CALGARY — The RDC Queens volleyball team guaranteed themselves a trip to nationals by squeaking by the Grand Prairie Wolves 25-20, 20-25, 26-24, 17-25, 15-12 in the Alberta Colleges Women’s Volleyball League semifinal at Mount Royal on Saturday.
“We knew that Grande Prairie had some really good defenders — I think the two teams combined wound up with just over 200 digs for the match — so it was a defensive battle. We had to do better at the net . . . and I thought we were just slightly better,” said Queens coach Talbot Walton.
With Alberta getting a wild card birth to nationals, just making the provincial final punched the Queens’ ticket.
The Queens got a monster match from Jessica Clutton who had 22 kills, 13 digs and three stuff blocks. Meanwhile Jaclyn Neufeld came off the bench and delivered in the clutch with nine kills, five digs and two stuff blocks. Katie Graves added 15 kills and 25 digs while Quinn Schulzke had 20 digs and Robyn Brouwer 19.
The Queens face MacEwan at 3 p.m. in the final and despite everything that’s on the line Walton expects his girls to be nice and relaxed for the gold medal game.
“We got through our hardest match of the weekend, the one we had the most pressure on ourselves to execute in. We’re at the point where we can just let it go tomorrow and just play and play well. That’s all we need to do is go out and have fun,” said Walton.
“It’s the final, man, we worked all year to get here and let’s go see what we can do.”
MacEwan reached the final with a 25-18, 25-20, 25-21 victory over the Mount Royal Cougars.
On the consolation side, Lakeland beat SAIT 3-1 and King’s downed Medicine Hat 3-2.
Kings 3 Clippers 0
A day after playing one of their worse matches of the season the RDC Kings bounced back to beat the Briercrest Bible College Clippers of Caronport, Sask., 25-14, 25-15, 25-14 in consolation semifinal play at the men’s championship in Grande Prairie.
“We followed up our worse match of the season by our best, but it was a day late unfortunately,” said Kings head coach Aaron Schulha, whose squad lost 3-0 to MacEwan Friday. “Still it was nice to see the guys rebound.”
Chris Wowchuk, who was RDC’s player of the match, and Mitch Irvine finished with 12 kills and five digs each.
The Kings face Keyano College of Fort McMurray in the fifth-place match today.
Keyano, who will host the national finals, beat Grande Prairie 20-25, 27-25, 25-19, 25-20 Saturday.
On the championship side, MacEwan edged Medicine Hat 25-21, 21-25, 25-13, 20-25, 15-10 and Mount Royal downed SAIT 25-23, 26024, 25-27, 25-23.
l In ACAC men’s basketball quarter-final play, Concordia College of Edmonton downed Medicine Hat 90-76 Saturday to win their best-of-three series 2-1 and will host the ACAC Final Four, beginning Friday.
Concordia will meet the RDC Kings in the semifinal while Mount Royal takes on Lethbridge, who won their best-of-three against Lakeland College of Lloydminster 2-1 with an 82-69 victory Saturday.
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