Wasilla 2nd in bracket at Anchorage tourney

WASILLA — The Wasilla Warriors and Soldotna Stars keep running into each other.

The Northern Lights Conference rivals have already split a pair of regular season matches. Wasilla edged SoHi in bracket play during the West Spiketacular. Saturday, just more than a week after Wasilla edged Soldotna 3-2 in an NLC match, they found themselves on the opposite side of the net once again.

And the series is once again even. An NLC win for each and a regular season tournament victory apiece.

Soldotna used a 2-1 (25-19, 20-25, 15-4) best-of-3 victory to win the silver bracket of the Dimond/Service Tournament Saturday afternoon at Service High School.

The Warriors swept a pair of best-of-3 matches to advance to the final. The Warriors opened bracket play with a 2-00 (25-20, 25-19) win over Nikiski and followed with a 2-0 (25-16, 25-12) win over Juneau-Douglas.

Colony was also part of the silver bracket, but suffered a 2-0 (25-17, 25-13) loss to Soldotna in the quarterfinals. The Knights followed with a 2-0 (25-23, 25-17) loss to Nikiski in the consolation bracket.

The Warriors and Knights were placed in the silver bracket based on results of pool play on Friday. Both teams were 2-6.

Co-host Dimond won the 20-team tournament. Colony senior Eve Stephens represented the Valley on the all-tournament team.

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