By Glen Miller/Staff Writer Redlands Community College’s volleyball team heads into the NJCAA Region II Championships with one united goal — proving to newer teams that there is fight left in the old guard. The Cougars, now in their 10th season, will play Seminole State College in the first round of the tourney — being hosted by Enid’s Northern Oklahoma College. Seminole is one of the newer teams to the Bi-State Conference, which standings are used to determine seeding for the four-team region championships. Redlands, ranked No. 27 nationally and 20-10 on the year, has lost twice to Seminole. The most recent was a four-game loss to cap the regular season and dropped the Cougars from 19th in the NJCAA Division I poll to its current spot. “I don’t think having to play Seminole again will have a negative affect,” Redlands coach Kristin Vincent said. “We decided after the last loss that we were going to work on giving them our best possible match.” The two meetings with Seminole have been close matches, settled by a combine 43 points. Only one of the eight games played in the series has been decided by more than five points. “We are so evenly matched that it causes close games,” Vincent said. “Plus I think Seminole plays well against us.” Vincent said one of the keys to beating Seminole, which is unranked and sports 16-22 record, would be serving. Redlands lost the last match by a combined 13 points, but committed 14 service errors. The Cougars have made 28 errors at the serving line, either long, wide or into the net, in the losses to SSC. “We had too many service errors in that last match,” Vincent said. “So we’ve spent the last few practices working on fundamentals, Sometimes kids can get ahead of themselves.” Serving is a large part of the Cougars offense, logging 25 aces in the two matches with Seminole and 284 for the season. Mari Araujo leads the RCC squad with 67 aces, followed by Mari Cruz with 58 and 40 from RoShell Oliphant. Eleven players for Redlands have at least once ace serve, with Carol Petukauskaus having 37 and Georgia Aplon 39. Vincent feels her team will bounce back from the loss to Seminole and that losing both regular season meetings will not cast lingering doubts. “It can be detrimental if you dwell on it,” Vincent said. “It’s not the way we wanted to end the regular season and it was a disappointing match, but we are choosing not to dwell on it.” Redlands has a winning record on the road and is sporting as .218 team hitting percentage. Araujo is the top hitter on the team with 366 kills and a .272 average. Aplon has chipped in 259 kills, followed by Cruz with 217 and a 186 by Petukauskaus. “Our blocking has gotten better, but we still need to improve on it,” Vincent said. “Our serve receive is sound, so we just need to cut down on our mistakes.” Kyla Pinkston had a team-leading 65 blocks, followed by Petukauskaus with 50 and 46 by Cruz.