Leah Jacobson (Photo by Noah Clooten)
DEVILS LAKE — The Royals are banged up right now. They have four players down with injuries, including three starters.
Yet Lake Region State College (15-5, 1-0) found a way to win its volleyball conference opener against Dawson Community College (2-8, 0-1) at the Devils Lake Sports Center on Tuesday. The Royals let a big lead in the third set get away, but they managed to win the match 3-1.
They won the first two sets 25-13 and 25-19. They dropped the third set 25-19, but got a 25-19 win of their own to cap it off. It was the Royals’ 15th win of the season, matching their total from last year.
“I felt like we played okay,” LRSC head coach Steve Waddell said. “We were all right. We’re down three starters right now to injury, so I’m really proud of the kids who stepped up. We’ve got a really deep bench, and we’ve come out of it pretty much unscathed at this point.”
Two of the players who stepped up the most were Anne Stroklund and Katie Leece. They totaled 14 and 12 kills, respectively, on the night unofficially. It was particularly vital in the wake of not having Madison Samuelson or Lexie Shearer.
Samuelson is expected to miss four to six weeks, Waddell said. Shearer could be back as soon as this Wednesday.
Stroklund entered the night as the team’s top healthy attacker with 2.65 kills per set. It’s second to only Samuelson overall.
“Anne has been stepping up a ton,” Waddell said. “I knew that she was gonna be pretty good, but she needed a few matches to get used to the speed of our game. And I feel like she’s responded really, really nicely.”
It’s Leece’s second year on the team. She’s more than tripled her kills-per-set so far, and entered as the second-most potent healthy attacker.
“She’s been steady in the back. She’s been steady all the way around for us,” Waddell said. “And she’s starting to hit the ball with some pace.”
Sophomore Marianna De Pombo also chipped in with a couple of kills in the first set. The Royals trailed 10-9 to open things up, but they rattled off a 10-0 run to take charge. They ended up outscoring Dawson 16-3 the rest of the way to get the 25-13 win.
Dawson came out hitting hard in the second set. It won the first three points. LRSC inched ahead with a pair of 4-0 runs, then widened its lead to 16-8.
Freshman Daisy Mabin came up with some pesky blocks from up front, especially down the stretch. She totaled five kills in the set. Leece finished the 25-19 win with a kill, and the Royals rolled to a 2-0 match lead.
They seemed to be on cruise control after taking a 16-9 lead in the third set. They were nine points away from a sweep.
But the Buccaneers chipped away, and things soon turned disastrous for LRSC.
Dawson won seven points in an eight-point span, prompting Waddell to take a timeout. The Royals won the first point out of the break, but the Bucs got the Royals off balance with a deep kill.
After leading 19-17, LRSC dropped the final eight points of the set. It ended in a 16-3 run for Dawson — matching the run the Royals dropped on the Bucs in the first set. LRSC, which had been controlling the match despite a banged-up roster, suddenly looked discombobulated.
“We want to learn from that, but forget it, right?” Waddell said. “So we want to move forward, but just kind of learn from what was happening.”
A similar thing nearly happened in the fourth set, in an eventual 25-19 win. This time, the lead was 18-9. Dawson won six straight points from there. Waddell took another timeout.
“I saw Dawson crawling back a little bit in set four, so I felt like that was a good time to kind of chirp at them a little bit,” Waddell said.
But the duo of Stroklund and Leece proved too much for the Bucs. They helped the Royals win the first three points out of the break. Anna Bessonova also chipped in, using her height to smash one of her six kills on the night.
The Royals could breathe after not letting the fourth set get away.
“They responded really nicely, and they came out and they finished the set,” Waddell said. “So this team is gritty, and they’re strong mentally. So that’s really been the key for our success this year.”
LRSC jumps right back into conference play Wednesday against Miles Community College (7-4-1, 0-0-1) at 7 p.m.
