Kings 3 Trojans 2
With the raising of the CCAA championship banner Saturday it was a day to celebrate for the RDC volleyball Kings.
But the SAIT Trojans tried to ruin it, forcing the match to a fifth set before the Kings pulled out a 25-10, 25-27, 24-26, 25-18, 15-6 Alberta Colleges Men’s Volleyball League victory before a full house at RDC.
“It felt similar to yesterday (Friday) in that they came out half a sleep in the first set and then we seemed surprised that they were a better team than we though,” said Kings head coach Aaron Schulha, whose team won 25-14, 26-24, 25-23 over the Trojans at SAIT Friday.
“They’re a good team and their new coach (Sean McKay) does a good job of energizing them at the right time. They’re going to feed off that and will be a tough team down the road … they already are.”
The Kings had trouble handling the Trojans second-year outside hitters — Trent Mounter and Russell Gruising, who finished with 19 and 17 kills, respectively.
“We talked early in the match about getting out on them, but we didn’t make that adjustment until later,” explained Schulha. “Once we started letting their middles go one-on-one and paying more attention to their outside hitters we did a better job.”
Kings setter Luke Brisbane also started using his middles more and Regan Fathers, who is playing the right side for the first time this season, started to take over the match.
“Regan was still making a few mistakes, but as the match wore on he started to take over, which was nice to see,” said Schulha.
Fathers finished with 20 kills, nine digs, two blocks and six aces. Two of his aces came late in the fifth set to help put the match away.
Despite going the distance, Schulha wasn’t disappointed.
“It was nice to see that kind of battle with a big crowd. It was like a playoff match the first weekend of the season,” he said. ‘That will only help us going forward. You need that competition.”
Middle Adam Turlejski added nine kills and three blocks, while Brain Grenier had six kills, nine digs and two aces, and Daimyn Bilestsky five kills. Brisbane had 42 assists.
Queens 3 Trojans 2
The Queens dominated the first two sets, winning 25-17, 25-13, then sat back and almost blew it. The Trojans won 25-18, 27-25 and were ahead 11-7 in the fifth set before the Queens regained their momentum.
“We’re been struggling between sets this season and we seemed to get over that in the first two,” said Queens head coach Chris Wandler. “But then after the second set we got back on our heals.”
The Trojans also did a better job of spreading their offence around.
“They made our job more difficult on defence,” said Wandler. “We didn’t show enough defensive grit like we did in the second set. In that set we dug everything and took the life out of them.”
The fifth set saw the Queens pick up the pace defensively and Jessica Jones helped put the game away with some tough serves, which included two aces.
“Jessica looked like she lost her legs a bit in that fourth set so we gave her break, and she came back in the fifth and her spin serve was a key,” said Wandler, who also used both setters — Ashley Fehr and Chanelle Kayser, who transferred in from SAIT this year.
“Ashley did a great job, but because of our passing she had to run all over the court and wore out a bit. We were able to bring Chanelle in and that’s the benefit of having two fourth-year setters. We never lost a beat.”
The Queens are without star right side McKenna Barthel, who broke her finger and will be out until after Christmas. Rookie Brittney Davis stepped in and finished with seven kills, two aces, nine digs and two blocks.
“McKenna is a big loss, but Brittney did what we needed from her,” said Wandler.
Miranda Dawe finished with 12 kills. four aces, 15 digs and a block while Jones had 11 kills, three aces, six digs and two blocks and Megan Schmidt 11 kills, two aces and player of the game libero Lauren Marchall had 23 digs. Fehr had 35 assists and Kayser seven.
The RDC teams return home Oct. 28-29 against Medicine Hat.
Danny Rode is a retired Advocate reporter who can be reached at drode@www.reddeeradvocate.com, His work can also be seen at Danny’s blog at rdcathletics.ca.