Rattlers 3 Kings 0
RDC Kings volleyball head coach Aaron Schulha felt his team had enough depth to overcome a few adversities.
That wasn’t the case Friday as they Kings sat out three starters, for team discipline, and it wasn’t pretty as they lost 19-25, 29-25, 22-25 to the Medicine Hat Rattlers in Alberta Colleges Men’s Volleyball League play before a near full house at RDC.
“It’s a team issue and we’ll keep it in house,” said Schulha when asked about having setter Luke Brisbane, middle Adam Turlejski and left side Matt Lofgren on the bench.
“In the grand scheme of things I thought we were deeper than we showed tonight. I thought we’d be more competitive without those guys. Obviously Luke is a big presence. He puts up a big block and they’re very skilled on the outside.
“Still we ultimately shot ourselves in the foot. When we put service pressure on them we were able to build some rhythm, but it wasn’t often enough. We have to piece it together and put together a new game plan for tomorrow.”
The teams meet again today following the women’s match which gets underway at 1 p.m.
The RDC Queens struggled early but quickly found their game and rolled to a 25-22, 25-21, 25-16 victory.
The Kings didn’t pass with consistency and Schulha felt their offence was too predictable.
“Without Matt we had some passing issues today, but we’ll talk about that and try to fix it.”
Schulha had Ryan Beatson starting at setter and also used a number of players on the left side. First-year Parker Biletsky came in off the bench and played well for his first extended playing time.
He finished with six kills, four blocks and two digs. Beatson was the player of the game for the Kings, finishing with 34 assists. Middle Ty Moorman had a solid game with nine kills while Regan Fathers had 13 kills and five digs.
The Kings had problems with the Rattlers outside hitters with Joel Kotyk finishing with 11 kills and Alfred Dalevik 10.
Queens 3 Rattlers 0
The Queens trailed 18-11 in the first set, but charged back to tie it at 19 and never looked back.
“We should expect teams to come our gunning for us,” said Queens head coach Chris Wandler. “They were serving well, which we didn’t seem prepared for, and we weren’t serving tough at all. Just lollipop serves which they easily turned around.”
But once the Queens picked up the pace they began to pass better, which led to a better attack. As well the Queens didn’t have any big letdowns after the beginning of the first set.
“We’ve been working on making sure we’re consistent, so that the last play doesn’t affect the next play,” said Wandler. “We’re cutting down the roller coaster ride and not allowing the other teams to get on big runs.
“We also talked about picking up their service speed and depth and when we were consistent with that, and at ease, you saw the result.”
Rookie Jade Van Dyke, who started in place of Jessica Jones,who is out with a touch of the flu, had 13 kills, two blocks and four digs for the Queens while Miranda Dawe had 12 kills, four aces, five digs and two blocks. Chanelle Kayser had 25 assists and Ashley Fehr had nine.
Amber Stigter had 11 kills for the Rattlers and Kaila Gavel 24 assists.
Danny Rode is a retired Advocate reporter who can be reached at drode@www.reddeeradvocate.com.