KCC Bearcats take match from Warroad Warriors in 3 sets

By Coach Tina Turn
On Thursday, Sept. 16, the KCC Bearcats walked into a packed gym in Warroad to take on the Warriors in volleyball action.
In set one, the Bearcats established a steady tone behind the serving of Kira Whitlock who opened the night with 2 aces and kept a run going. After a quick sideout, Berlyn Strege stepped to the line and took her turn to frustrate the Warrior passers. Cheyanne Scalese pounded in 7 of her 18 kills of the night in set one alone. KCC also played good defense in the set, which led to a 25-16 win.
Set two wasn’t as rosy as set one for the Bearcats. Energy waned and KCC struggled to string together more than 2 points at a time. The Warriors scrambled on defense and picked up a lot of Bearcat swings to keep them in the game and in the lead for much of the set. KCC regrouped during a 24-24 timeout, but the two teams kept trading points until Morgan Turn put an end cap on the set with an overpass tip kill for the extra points 28-26 win.
The Warriors were relentless in set three and hungry for the set win. A strong start by Warroad led to a 5-point lead. With the Bearcats down 9-14, a timeout was called. KCC found some angles to hit on offense after the timeout and surged closer. In the end, the Warriors didn’t have quite enough offensive power to stay with the Bearcats and with Scalese, who had 5 kills to pace the Cats in what proved to be the final set of the night with a second come-from-behind win by KCC 25-23.
We were happy to get this win over an AA team in three sets. The last two close sets should help boost the confidence of the team to know they can fight back and win tight games. Hats off to Warroad who did a tremendous job on defense. The Bearcats had a solid 27 percent hitting efficiency on the night, which is well above our match goal, but Warroad played a clean game as well. In set three, the Warriors didn’t even have an error until after point 20. The large crowd was treated to a fun game of volleyball where both teams earned their points rather than got points from errors. KCC had 8 aces and 87 percent serving against Warroad.

Click here for stats of the game VB vs Warroad