Kings 3 Eagles 0
With first place on the line in the Alberta Colleges Men’s Volleyball League, the RDC Kings managed to find their game Saturday night and sweep The King’s University College Eagles 3-0 one night after losing in five sets at TKUC.
The 25-18, 25-23, 25-17 win will actually give the Kings the breaker over the Eagles who will have two more set losses against them in their head-to-head match up.
The win also helps the Kings keep pace with the league leading Briercrest Clippers who had a two-point lead heading into Saturday’s action.
“Right now we have an identical record but losing in five and then winning in three should give us the tie break, but more importantly it helps us with the confidence,” said Kings head coach Aaron Schulha. “If you look at all three of our losses this far they have all bee five-set losses and they’ve all been on Fridays. Obviously we need to prepare a little bit better and have the same mind set that we seem to have on Saturdays during our first match against a team on the weekend.”
The Kings will actually get their shot to take down the Clippers this coming week, but they will have to do it with both matches in Caronport, Sask.
“It’s a tough gym to play in and their roof is actually much lower than ours, so you almost have to change your game plan entirely,” said Schulha. “So we have to spend the entire week preparing the guys to deal with that.”
Key to Saturday’s rebound was not getting to down on themselves over Friday’s 3-2 loss. A look back at the tape revealed just how close the match was.
“I think we had a lot of confidence after last night’s loss,” said Schulha. “The confidence came from the fact we missed 22 serves and had probably half-a-dozen plays that I would consider to be bone head plays that shouldn’t happen at this level, just easy communication errors that shouldn’t happen. So to be able to give away 30 points last night and still be within two points in a tough gym to play in with a rowdy crowd I think gave us the confidence heading into today and knowing if we looked after what we could control that we’d be a much tough team to beat at home.”
The Kings were led by Taylor Hunt who had 10 kills and two aces while Sean Tuft had eight kills, two blocks and one dig.
Meanwhile the Queens rolled over the Eagles 25-15, 25-12, 25-16 in women’s action.
The Queens ran their record to 9-5 while the Eagles dropped to 6-8.