The #9 (2A) Aplington-Parkersburg volleyball team held off a scrappy Alta-Aurelia unit and won 3-0 in Wednesday’s 2A Region 7 quarterfinal, as aired on 99 The Wave and RadioOnTheGo’s YouTube channel. The set scores were 25-19, 25-13, 25-17.
The Falcons and Warriors were engaged in a tight battle in set 1. AP finally forced a timeout by jumping out to a 19-15 lead, but Alta-Aurelia cut the deficit to 25-19. At that point, the Falcons finished the set with four straight points. In set 2, AP ran away after scoring the first seven to take a commanding lead. But the Warriors didn’t go down without a fight, using impressive diving digs to catch the Falcons off guard. But AP’s offensive firepower proved to be no match. Senior Kolbie Wangsness says they faced a challenge, though found their rhythm as the night went on.
“We started off a little rough,” Wangsness says. “We didn’t have a lot of energy to start, but we cleaned that up pretty quick, I’d say. Got better throughout the three sets, and they came out ready to play. They were a super scrappy team, and they came out ready to play, and they knew if it was going be their last game, they weren’t going to go without fighting. They got a lot of balls up. They came out ready to fight, and it took us a second to come out to fight, but we got there. I’m proud of that.”
Sophomore Jenzen Klooster led with 11 kills.
“We just had to come and do our job and do our own stuff, and then we would be perfectly fine,” Klooster says. “We came out, we didn’t really have that much energy, but once we got going, we were just unbeatable. When our team gets going, we’re unstoppable, and that’s what I love about us.”
Zoey Uhlenhopp added eight kills and Wangsness had six. Head Coach Candace Kleespies says the team’s ability to mix it up offensively is a key strength.
“The beauty about our team is, if you truly look at a lot of team stats when you’re scouting them, a lot of the teams will have one girl that has a pretty high number of their attempts and their kills, and then the next couple girls will be a little ways down,” Kleespies says. “And when you look at our team, we are pretty close, we got about four girls or five girls I think that are all within like ten kills of each other. So sometimes Julia’s hard part of the night is trying to figure out who to set because they’re all doing well. So tonight I felt like Kolbie really came in and just had some really smart swings, and Zoey had some good swings. Jenzen’s starting to really find her groove out on the left pin, because that’s only about two weeks in. Then Shelby kind of towards that second set really started to settle in an find it with Julia too.”
The Falcons will return to action Monday by hosting East Sac County for a regional semifinal.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD8s55L-4B0?si=GODlDwyEZrSkv1kr&w=560&h=315]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTWfpcKudRg?si=pYS6nW9BBbrRZtke&w=560&h=315]
