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Volleyball Kings can lock home for league final

The RDC Kings would like nothing better than to host the Alberta Colleges Men’s Volleyball League final this season.

Kings 3 Cougars 0

The RDC Kings would like nothing better than to host the Alberta Colleges Men’s Volleyball League final this season.

They can do just that by winning out in the first half.

They took the first step in that direction with a 25-23, 25-19, 25-22 victory over the Mount Royal University Cougars before close to 400 fans at RDC Friday.

But Kings head coach isn’t looking that far down the road.

“The guys are aware of it, but we’re not focusing on it,” said Kings head coach Aaron Schulha.

“We’re looking continuing to improve each time out. Mind you if we win out we’re there and I’d rather have it in our own hands than leaving it up to someone else.”

Then Kings were well deserving of the victory Friday as they made few mistakes.

“It was nice to see a complete match for the most part,” said Schulha.

“We can always improve, but we talked about coming out hard and sustaining that throughout.

“After the Briercrest weekend (to open the season) we’ve been up and down. But teams like Briercrest and Mount Royal bring out our best.”

The Kings were solid on defence and didn’t give away a lot of free points.

‘We had a bit of a lull in the second set, but our blocking and defence, especially the back row defence did a good job of getting us out of some trouble.

“Plus our attack was a little bit better.”

That was attributed to setter Jackson Maris, who did an excellent job of spreading the ball around.

“We worked on a few different things in practice and Jackson has come a long way in the last week.

“He did a great job in terms of running the offence, using a bit more speed and getting the middles involved. He’s a student of the game and wants to learn and to get better. Tonight may have been his most complete game of the season.”

The Kings had three players in double figures in kills as Quentin Schmidt had 14 kills and 13 digs, Tucker Leinweber had 11 kills, five digs and two stuff blocks and Dennis Wierenga 10 kills and nine digs.

Boston Maris had seven kills while Jackson Maris finished with three stuff blocks and three kills.

Cougars 3 Queens 1

The Queens looked to have the match in hand late in the second set as they won the first set 25-21 and were leading the second 23-21 before going to sleep.

“I wrote in my book that we feel asleep for four points and it cost us a match,” said Queens head coach Talbot Walton.

“The girls thought we had it and took their foot off the gas a bit and then when they tied it we tried to force it and couldn’t find it again.”

The Queens were terrible in the final two sets losing 10-25, 15-25.

They lost their ability to pass especially on the MRU serve.

“It’s disappointing as we had that match under control,” added Walton.

“The things we did to let it slip away are things we don’t want to be part of our team. That loss in the second set certainly carried over, plus we weren’t winning the long rallies and the girls took that as a negative. We needed to be more excited in those rallies, but it deflated us and we were thinking of the wrong things and the errors just piled up.”

The Cougars are also more experienced than the Queens as they have all but one player back from last year.

Brooke Sutter had nine kills, 14 digs and two blocks while Megan Brouwer had 11 digs.

RDC plays at Mount Royal tonight and hosts Grant MacEwan next Friday.

drode@www.reddeeradvocate.com