Viking volleyball team ends regular season on winning note

Next stop for the Viking volleyball team is the district tournament Saturday with a morning matchup against the Atlanta Huskies. Posen ended the regular season with a victory over Mackinaw City Monday on the home floor. The scores against the MC Comets were 16-14 and 15-6. In the first game, Posen found itself down 14-11 before scoring the final five points of the game.

Senior captain Julie Lewandowski, who played her last match on the home floor for the red and white, believes Posen mistakes kept the Comets close. ?We should have beat them by more,? said Lewandowski after the match.

The lone senior likes the Vikings? chances against Atlanta, if they can play together. She said they?ll need to cover the blockers, communicate and move their feet. The Vikings played their last North Star League game of the season last Thursday, dropping their first game to Fairview 15-17, but coming back and winning the final two games, 15-10 and 16-14.

The Eagles were up 14-8 in the final game and needed one point to take the match, but Posen came back for the win. The Vikings? NSL record ends up at 8-6. The overall record is 20-11.

The first match of the district tournament has Atlanta and Posen playing at 9:30 a.m. The winner plays Johannesburg-Lewiston at 12:30 p.m. Gaylord St. Mary is pitted against Hillman at 11 a.m. The tournament is at the Atlanta High School gym. The district final is at 2 p.m.

THE MOMENTUM swung back and forth in that first game against Mackinaw City. Posen went on top 1-0 but both teams traded poor serves in the early going. That?s an area the Vikings have struggled with lately, but after getting a few out of their system, the Posen players settled down and got the ball over.

The Comets did take the lead at 3-1, but it slipped away as the Vikes scored three straight points themselves, to lead 4-3. Posen didn?t stay in the lead long as MC scored the next five points and was up 8-4. The Vikings got the serve back on one of the nicest looking plays of the night as Shannon Ciarkowski set up Kyrie Kuffel for a kill. Jaime Litwinski then went to the serving line and paced Posen to six straight points, including two aces, and a 10-8 advantage.

On five consecutive points, the Vikings didn?t touch the ball after Litwinski served it over, as the Comets couldn?t return it. The Comets got the ball back but wasted their chance with a bad serve. Kuffel set up Lewandowski for a kill and an 11-8 lead for Posen. But the momentum swung back toward the Comets who scored the next six points and were in a ?game-point? position to win. MC?s undoing was giving up two costly points after being penalized by an official for ?overlapping? or being out of position. The final penalty point gave the Vikes the win.

POSEN STARTED confidently in the second game, jumping out to a 3-0

lead, but the schools traded streaks, much like the first game. The Comets tied the score at three and the lead changed hands three times before Courtney Romel served six straight points. Ciarkowski had two back-breaking aces that were untouched by MC, which took any more fight out of the visitors.

Lewandowski led Posen with 11 digs. She also had four kills and three blocks. Ciarkowski had six digs, a team-leading four blocks, and four kills. That follows a solid performance against Fairview where Ciarkowski had eight kills and four blocks. Romel was tops on the squad with three aces to go with her seven digs.

Kuffel had six digs and Litwinski four, while Mandy Altman saved five.