Knights cap weekend with second sweep, stayed unbeaten with win over Stars

SOLDOTNA — The Colony volleyball team used a smothering defense to sweep Soldotna in a Northern Lights Conference contest on Friday at Soldotna High School.

The scores of the games were 25-14, 25-21 and 25-14.

“They are probably the best team we’ve seen thus far this season,” Soldotna coach Bruce King said after his team dropped to 7-3 overall and 4-2 in the NLC. “They play the best defense of any team we’ve seen so far this season.”

Colony coach Amy Carter, whose squad is now 7-0 overall and 3-0 in the conference, said the Knights worked in practice this week on defense.

“I think they played very well,” Carter said of her team. “We didn’t have many defensive errors.”

The quality of Colony’s defense was apparent in Soldotna’s stats. Kaitlyn Wehrli paced the Stars with seven kills, while Shana Powell had four kills.

“The first game we were hitting the ball solid,” King said. “They dug everything up.”

The Stars were solid on defense themselves. They just had a tough time with Colony middle hitters Allie Grazulis, who had 15 kills, five digs, four blocks and two aces, and Kara Larson, who had eight kills, seven digs and three blocks. Kara Johnson added six blocks and three kills for the Knights.

“We blocked well and dug up a lot of balls, but it was not enough,” King said. “We have to tighten up our defense against the middle. We had no problem containing their left-side attack. It was just the middle.”

In each of the three games, Grazulis and Larson helped Colony jump out to a

cushy lead.

In the first game, Grazulis had three kills as Colony took a 4-3 lead. She then moved to the back row and served out eight straight points for a 12-3 lead. Larson had kills on three of those points.

In the second game, Grazulis had three kills to give the Knights a 3-0 lead, and another kill to help push the Knights a 5-2 lead. In the third game,

Grazulis had two kills and a block as the Knights grabbed a 4-0 lead.

“The fact that we gave them a big lead in each game and tried fighting back definitely hurt us,” King said.

Carter said Grazulis, who King called one of the best middle hitters in the state, is a nice luxury to have when both teams are playing solid defense.

“SoHi had a great block and a very good defense,” Carter said. “It’s nice to have a player who can put the ball on the floor.”

Carter said her defense was led by Jackie Hamann, who had 28 digs, and April Bleicher. The Stars also received nine blocks from Mariah Hamilton and six blocks from Megan Hardy.

Soldotna 3, Palmer 1

SOLDOTNA — The Stars rebounded on Saturday with a 21-25, 25-17, 25-19 and 25-23 victory over Palmer.

Powell led with 13 kills, while Wehrli added eight kills and Emily Rohloff had 17 assists. Powell also had 11 digs, while April Heffner had nine digs and Jessi Stenga and Wehrli had eight digs each.

Chelsea Wilbanks had 10 blocks, including seven that went for points, while Hamilton had eight blocks, including three that went for points. Stenga led in serving with two aces.