Colony tops rival Wasilla to earn NLC volleyball title

What you need to know:

• The Knights defeated rival Wasilla 30-21 in the deciding tiebreaker Saturday to win the Northern Lights Conference volleyball championship, avenging a semifinal loss to the Warriors.
• Taylor Passard led Colony with 18 kills, while Leanna Brockman added 11. The Knights never trailed in the deciding game and closed with a 10-3 run.
• Colony and Wasilla both earned spots in the Class 4A state volleyball championships, scheduled to begin Nov. 12 at the Alaska Airlines Center in Anchorage. Soldotna finished third in the region tournament, followed by Palmer in fourth.
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Last season, the Colony Knights found themselves on the wrong side of the “if necessary” game in both the region and state tournaments, settling for runner-up finishes each time. 

Saturday afternoon, Colony was back in that all-too-familiar spot. But this time, the Knights prevailed.

Colony outlasted rival Wasilla 30-21 in the “if necessary” tiebreaker to capture the region title Saturday during the final day of the Northern Lights Conference volleyball championships at Palmer High School.

“We usually don't dwell on it much, and we talk about it a little bit, just when it comes up,” Colony head coach Steve Reynolds said of the “if necessary” game after the win.

Top-seeded Colony needed to win both the championship match and the “if necessary” game of the double-elimination tournament after the second-seeded Warriors upset the Knights 3-2 (22-25, 25-19, 25-22, 18-25, 19-17) in the semifinals Friday night. Colony took care of business in the championship match with a 3-0 (25-16, 25-19, 25-16) victory to set up the final game to 30 points.

“It’s difficult to know you won the first one, but you’ve still got one to 30. The game to 30 is a lot longer than people realize. Five points makes a big difference,” Colony sophomore setter Emily DeHart said.

Reynolds said the hardest part is getting through the break between the championship match and the deciding game.

“They scare me because there's always that break,” Reynolds said. “Even how we played, we won in three, there's still that break. It was time for you to lose the adrenaline, the momentum.”

DeHart said it is important to stick with the course and strategy.

“I think we just went with the mentality, it’s one set at a time. Let’s be the first to five (points), the first to 10. The one-set mentality, one-point mentality really helps,” DeHart said.

Colony notched the first point of the final game and never trailed. 

But Wasilla kept it close. The Knights were able to maintain a three- or four-point lead throughout the majority of the game, and enjoyed their biggest stretch late. Colony capped the win with a 10-3 run. 

Senior Callan Knutsen delivered one of her seven kills to give Colony a 21-18 lead. A key four-point run followed. Sophomore Taylor Passard used a monster smack to bury a kill on the far side to push the lead to 25-19. Passard then tucked a hit just inside the left baseline. Senior Alli Morrisey added back-to-back service aces to extend Colony’s lead to 28-19.

Passard led Colony’s balanced attack with 18 kills. Leanna Brockman added 11, Knutsen finished with seven, and Sophie Allen and Hailey Biorn had six kills each.

“All of my hitters, every single one of them, every single one of my teammates I am so grateful for. They really make my job quite easy,” DeHart said. “They all want to win. They all put the ball away.”

Wasilla continued to show resilience throughout the tournament, including in the deciding game. Junior Rose Gutierrez delivered a service ace to cut Colony’s lead to 16-14. Senior Chloe Richardson notched another ace for the Warriors to bring Wasilla within a point.

“They are such a well-coached team, and they scrap for every single play,” DeHart said of the Warriors.

Reynolds said the Warriors improved tremendously throughout the season.

“We played them really early and we played them late. They were just a much different team,” Reynolds said. “We watched their games at regions before us. You could see they were really surging and their defense is amazing. Nothing falls.”

Reynolds said his team played better Saturday against the Warriors, rebounding from Friday night's semifinal loss.

“We made better hitting decisions and played better defense,” Reynolds said. “Emily always runs around and cleans stuff up for us.”

After Friday night's loss to Wasilla, Colony needed a win over Soldotna on Saturday morning in the elimination bracket to return to the region final. The Knights swept Soldotna 3-0 (25-16, 25-17, 25-10), using the match to make adjustments ahead of their rematch with the Warriors.

“I felt good about how we were playing starting earlier this morning. We made some changes to what we had been doing from the night before with Wasilla,” Reynolds said. “We were working on some adjustments that we wanted to bring into the Wasilla game. They were starting to really come together in that (Soldotna) game. I was starting to feel much better about things there.”

Colony and Wasilla both advance to the ASAA/First National Bank 4A State Volleyball Championships, which begin Nov. 12 at the Alaska Airlines Center in Anchorage.

Soldotna finished third in the NLC tournament, and Palmer placed fourth. Palmer opened with a 3-0 (25-11, 25-14, 25-13) win over Kodiak but followed with a 3-0 loss to Colony and a 3-1 loss to Soldotna.

Jeremiah Bartz is a longtime local journalist based in Palmer and has been a sportswriter in Alaska for nearly three decades. He writes about student activities for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, where he works full time as a community relations coordinator.