Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Allen Community College’s Red Devils have been a team with a split personality in 2012. Their volleyball performances shift from being very, very good to very, very ugly.
At home Wednesday night, the ugly came out. That resulted in a 25-22, 25-16, 25-13 loss to NJCAA Division II 14th-ranked Kansas City, Kan., Community College’s Blue Devils.
Allen pushed out to an 8-4 lead in the home match. The Red Devils were up 19-15 and still had a 22-21 lead late. But they lost the serve and Kansas City rattled off three consecutive points for the win.
The Red Devils never got the momentum back in the Jayhawk Conference/NJCAA Division II district match.
“We had three consecutive errors at the end of set one and that resulted in the shift that the Red Devils never gained back. We stopped playing as a team,” said Jessica Peters, ACC head coach. “It amazes me how these are the same girls. They either want it all and work for it or they expect other teams to give it to us.”
Kansas City opened the second set with six straight points and Allen never recovered. Adriee Munoz served three straight points to make it 10-6 but the Red Devils couldn’t shut the Blue Devils down enough to catch them.
Allen fell behind quickly in the third set. The Red Devils were within three points, 10-7, then the Blue Devils pulled away for the match victory.
“Tonight, we had one athlete who never quit — Hayley Mertens. We began depending on her heavily, which she was able to perform, but one player was not going to defeat an opponent like KCK. We needed a team that wanted to play at her level with the effort needed to defeat or at least compete with KCK,” Peters said.
Allen dropped to 9-11 overall. It is 1-3 in Jayhawk play and 1-4 in district play. Kansas City improved to 16-2, 4-0 and 3-0, respectively.
The Red Devils host Cottey College in non-conference play Friday. The match begins at 6:30 p.m. at the ACC gym.
Mertens finished with 17 kills and one solo block at the net. She also served three points and came up with eight digs. Munoz had seven service points and the lone ace serve for ACC. She also put up 10 set assists and came up with six digs.
Jacqui Ortiz was credited with 16 set assists and led the team in digs with 10. She served two points. Sierra Morgison had three service points and eight digs while Sidney Keith had one point.
Morgison and Keith each had three kills and one assisted block apiece. Randi Billings had one service point, three kills and three digs. Tayler Shook had one point and she had eight digs.
Sarah Charbonneau came up with nine digs. Danielle Goodman put down three kills and Autumn Douglas had two kills.