By Davie Wong

The opening week of PACWEST volleyball action saw the Royals take on the CBC Bearcats in a heated matchup, but week two only sees the competition get even hotter. This week, the Royals will be taking on the Capilano Blues in a matchup for Vancouver dominance.

                The Royals men’s team is coming off a hard fought week against the Bearcats. Their home opener went the whole way, spanning five sets in a crowd thriller. The game went down to the wire, requiring extra points in the fifth set to settle it. The Royals walked away with their first win of the season, and came back in the second game to take a more decisive victory over the Bearcats.

                They face the Capilano Blue this week, who have had a bit of a bumpy start to their season. The Blues visited the UFV Cascades in their first game of the season. The result was an extremely close game that could have went any way, but ended up going to the Cascades.

                The Royals will be visiting the Blues for their home opener, and will be looking to spoil things. Like the Royals, the Blues have an extremely young team, boasting only two returning players on a roster of 11. The men would be wary to watch third-year Blue, John De la Cruz. His offensive presence last week nearly spurred the Blues to a win.

                However, one thing the Royals have up on the Blues is net presence. In their only game played this season, the Blues have failed to really make an impact on the blocking front. Meanwhile, the Royals can count on Johnson Yi and Jackson Goodman to be constant blocking threats.

                Offensively, the Royals also have a few more options. Johnson Yi has certainly shown he can throw the ball down at any given time, and Justin Faester is more than capable of punishing poor positioning at any given time. However, the Royals also have a fresh point scorer in Mike Howren, who showed during the team’s week one matches that he is more than capable of swinging any set the Royals way.

                It’ll be a tight competition through and through, and this will be a real test for the young Royals squad as they take on a squad that is nearly identical to them in experience.

                For the women, they’ll be going into week two with a smooth slate. The team had an excellent week one against the CBC Bearcats, only dropping one set out of two games. Overall, the Royals looked dominant in their matchup against CBC. Everything seems to clicking and running like a well-oiled engine under new head coach Jeff Ross.

                On the other side of the court, Capilano also looks dominant. The Blues have a veteran squad this year that features four fifth-years, six second to fourth-years, and six rookies to back them up. Their experience backstopped them to a clean 3-0 win over the UFV Cascade last week.

                The Royals will need some big performances from their key players if they want to take games off the Blues. Juliana Penner will really need to rally her team and lead them by example, like she did this week. If the serving line played anywhere near as well as they did weekend, and the Royals can take advantage of their leads, the team can take games off the Blues indefinitely.