Volleyball Kings defeat Olds College in three sets

Following the Queens, the RDC Kings Volleyball team hit the court against the Olds College Broncos at the RDC Main Gym. The Kings entered tonight's game in top spot in the ACAC Men's Volleyball South Division with a 6-2 record. The Kings started strongly and held a lead throughout, sweeping the Broncos in 3 straight sets.

In the first set RDC pushed out to a 14-4 margin and took the opening set 25-8. Parker Biletsky led the Kings with 3 kills while adding 3 service aces and 1 dig. As a team the Kings accumulated 9 kills in the first set.

The second set played out in similar fashion. The Kings roared out to a 13-5 lead and extended the margin to 18-7. Eventually the RDC Kings won 25-12. Matthew Lofgren contributed 3 kills, 4 service aces and 1 dig in the second set for the Kings.

Once again the RDC Kings started the third set well, opening up a 9-4 lead. The Kings won the third set 25-15 to take the match in 3 straight sets. As a team, the Kings finished with a match total of 33 kills, 31 assists, 16 service aces and 29 digs.

Ryan Beatson was chosen as the Kings player-of-the-game. The Bachelor of Arts student finished with 27 assists, 2 service aces, 4 digs and 1 kill. 

Overall, Kings Head Coach Aaron Schulha was happy with the focus from the student-athletes.

"There were a few too many errors at the end but in the grand scheme of things sometimes these matches are hard to play," said Schulha. "Our guys did a nice job making sure we kept our own energy up."

Despite hitting 16 service aces Schulha thought the serving game was decent.

"Our serve game was OK today. We missed too many serves at times," said Schulha. "We had more aces than errors today but I don't think we were serving the heck out of the ball. We wanted our float servers in particular to work on short serves as well and that looked OK. They did the job but we let the Broncos off the hook at times."

The Kings were able to utilize a variety of players on the court today which will be valuable in the future.

"Everyone who hasn't had much playing time to this point will get significant time today and tomorrow and hopefully next weekend as well," said Schulha. "It's good for those guys to get some playing time because they are doing a good job in practice which is important to me and important to reward those guys. We've had to battle through some injuries each of the past few years and there are never any guarantees. So those guys need some game experience and we are well aware of that. It will help us down the road."

Pushing their record to 7-2 the Kings remain in first place in the South Division. 

In Olds, the Kings face the Broncos Saturday, Nov. 12 at 3:00 p.m.