Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – For better than four and a half sets Regina and West Branch played to a virtual deadlock on Thursday evening.

In a nearly dead even five-set marathon filled with long rallies and even longer sets it was Regina that had the slightly better kick to the finish.

Class 2A No. 13 Regina snapped an 8-8 tie in the fifth set with a 3-0 burst and held on for a 22-25, 25-19, 30-28, 28-30, 15-12 win over West Branch in a River Valley Conference South Division thriller in Iowa City.

“They are a really scrappy team, they are all over the floor, West Branch is a really, really good defensive team and if we wanted to play with them tonight we had to do the same thing,” Regina coach Lauren Hansen said. “That’s what we talked about in the timeouts and I thought our girls did a good job of that late in the match.

Reese Naeve had a match-high 28 kills and teammate Kiley Devery added 19 kills as Regina improved to 13-6 on the season.

Both Naeve and Devery came up big in the final set as Regina finally pulled away.

Naeve had two kills and a solo block and Devery had a kill as Regina closed the match on a 7-4 run to break an 8-all tie.

“We wanted to leave it all out there and we knew we had to keep it positive and keep our energy up,” Naeve said. “We really stayed positive and kept the pressure on them and we were really smart with our hits and using the block.”

West Branch rallied from down 23-20 in the fourth set and forced a decisive fifth set when back-to-back kills by senior Kya Montgomery closed out a 30-28 Bear win in the fourth set.

The Bears jumped to a 3-1 lead in the fifth set but couldn’t hang on dropping to 5-4 on the season with their first loss to an RVC opponent this season.

“Tuesday we won against Cascade but we didn’t play like we should have played and they improved so much from Tuesday to Thursday,” West Branch coach Monica Tylee said. “We played our game, we just fell a little short against a ranked team tonight.”

There was no separation from either side for most of the match.

West Branch closed the opening set on a 14-6 run to earn a 25-22 win and Regina pulled even with a 25-19 win in the second set.

The next two sets were battles past 25.

Devery closed out a 30-28 Regina win in the third set with a kill and an ace block to give the Regals the edge.

“After the first set I didn’t think we had the energy that we needed to have so I told myself in my head that I needed to push and be the one to step up,” Devery said. “I needed to get some kills, get some blocks, get us moving and get the energy flowing.”

West Branch trailed 14-9 and 21-16 in the fourth set but the Bears wouldn’t go away.

Trailing 23-20 West Branch got a kill from Alyse Klinkkammer, a kill by Kylie Pickett and an ace serve from sophomore Alyssa Vargason to pull even.

West Branch eventually forced the fifth set on the late surge led by Montgomery.

“We have been going back and forth with points and not getting multiple points in a row so we worked on a lot of drills this week where we had to get two or three in a row because that’s where we’ve struggled,” West Branch coach Becky Hosier said. “If we can get that down we will be fine because the last two games we played were back and forth and back and forth and we just couldn’t finish.”

Regina made the plays late to pull away.

Leading 9-8 senior Avery Kies came off the bench and recorded an ace serve and Naeve followed with a kill to give the Regals an 11-8 lead they would never give up.

“I threw in a server tonight, Avery Kies, who has never served a match in her life but she has this serve that I knew if she hit it we would be golden and I just told her she needed to go back there and hit the serve she hits in practice,” Hansen said. “We put her in and she did exactly what I asked her tonight.”

West Branch got as close as 11-10 on a Klinkkammer kill but a serving error and a Naeve block made it 13-10 and kills by Abby Schuessler and Naeve put the match away.

“We expected them to be very scrappy and they served hard and got us out of system a lot the first two sets,” Naeve said. “But we came back and regrouped and got our passes better and got in system.”

Pickett led West Branch with 19 kills while Emily Coleman had 14 kills, two ace serves and two ace blocks for the Bears.

Montgomery added 10 kills and Klinkkammer had nine.

West Branch             25  19  28  30  12

Regina                        22  25  30  28  15

Regina (Kills-aces-blocks)

Kiley Devery 19-1-0, Reese Naeve 28-4-3, Avery Kies 0-1-0, Addison Bollier 0-0-0, Caitlin Martin 2-1-0, Elizabeth Nolte 4-0-1, Abby Schuessler 3-0-1, Sydney Wagner 1-2-1, Totals 57-7-7.

Assists – Sydney Wagner 46

West Branch (Kills-aces-blocks)

Alyse Klinkkammer 9-4-0, Kylie Pickett 19-1-0, Emily Coleman 14-2-2, Claire Jarrett 3-3-0, Kya Montgomery 10-0-1, JaLynn Falco 0-1-0, Alyssa Vargason 7-1-2, Madelynn Falco 0-1-0, Totals 62-13-5.

Assists – Claire Jarrett 44, Alyse Klinkkammer 1, Kylie Pickett 1

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