Kodiaks win in five sets again

The Lethbridge College Kodiaks women’s volleyball once again ventured into familiar territory and produced what’s been a familiar result in the process.

The Kodiaks downed the Red Deer Queens 3-2 (20-25, 25-23, 24-26, 25-20, 15-11) in Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference play Friday night at the Val Matteotti Gymnasium to improve to 4-1 on the season.

For the fourth time in five games, the Kodiaks pushed it to the 15-point, winner-take –all set and emerged with the home win in an earlyseason battle of the second-place teams in the ACAC South Division, posting a 15-11 win in the fifth set thanks to a 9-5 run.

The win puts the Kodiaks two points up on the Queens as the teams set up the rematch today at 1 p.m. at the Val Matteotti Gymnasium.

On Friday, the players took matters into their own hands, rallying from down 2-1 for another five-set win

“As a coach they made us look pretty good,” said Kodiaks head coach Anna Schwark. “We didn’t have to do a lot. They were really quick to adapt. They stuck to our game play. We wanted to be using Red Deer’s defence as a strength for us. So it was trying to get those deep corners and mix up our shots as much as we could. They’ve got a great team, they’re very talented so we knew it wouldn’t be easy for us. If we were going down, we were going down with a fight and we were going to stay aggressive and keep swinging. That’s what we did and it worked in our favour.”

Kristine Ward and Corissa Mildenberger led the Kodiaks with 11 kills each Friday night, while Laura Serafini added nine.

Reina Hirata topped the 20-mark in digs with 22. Mildenberger and Ward each added 11 digs and Ashleigh Noel had 10.

“She did great,” said Schwark of Hirata. “The serve receive was awesome, but where she really shone was digs. She was present in every single cover and had every hitter’s back all the time. She was even pushing some other girls to get in there close when she couldn’t be the one to hit the ball. She was really sacrificing her body to keep the ball going. Sometimes our hitters didn’t have any other option other than to recycle the ball and use the block.”

In the men’s game, the Kodiaks trailed the Kings 2-1 at press time.

See Sunday’s Herald for the weekend wrapup.