The girls stole the show at the Centennial Centre on the weekend.
Both the Bonnyville Centralized High School (BCHS) and Notre Dame High School (NDHS) girls' teams came away with medals at the 24-team volleyball tournament on Sept. 19 and 20 in Bonnyville.
The BCHS Roadrunners girls squad played a hard fought championship match against the Cold Lake Royals, losing in two straight sets both by a score of 25-19.
“Our team played great. Yah, we finished in second place, but it was a really, really successful tournament,” said head coach Corey Baker.
“This year we have got a younger squad. We only have two grade 12's and the rest are grade 11's and 10's so we are working hard. Our goal here this weekend was to become a better team and we played a lot better at the end of the tournament than at the beginning of the tournament.”
The lady roadrunners won four our of their five round robin games, which included a three-set thriller over the NDHS Wildcats. A straight set win in the quarterfinals over J.A. Williams from Lac La Biche and a straight set win over Mallaig in the semi-finals propelled them into the championship match. In the end the team didn't quite have enough to get by a tough Cold Lake team.
“Cold Lake has a fantastic little squad,” said Baker. “They serve the ball really well and play great fundamental volleyball. They put the pall in the right spots and you really have to play your best to beat them.”
The NDHS lady Wildcats also got all they could handle from Cold Lake. After a 4-1 round robin, the Wildcats defeated Boyle in straight sets before being dropped by the Royals in the semifinals. The girls regrouped and squeaked out a three-set victory over Mallaig in the bronze medal match.
“In the bronze medal game we were making great passes and that just let us do whatever we wanted,” said head coach Tyler Collins. “When we get that opportunity we are pretty good. It is just about working on making those passes.”
NDHS dropped the first set 25-16 before coming back and winning the second set 25-14 and third set 15-12. The victory capped off a pretty good weekend for the team.
“The girls are always getting better every single week and that is what we want to see,” said Collins. “All of the players, from the rookies to the veterans, are getting better. We are just focusing on us every week.”
Both BCHS and NDHS had boy's teams play in the tournament as well, as there were 12 boys and 12 girls squads that made up the 24 teams that took over the C2 Field House on the weekend.
The BCHS boys squad didn't fair nearly as well as the girls team going 3-2 in the round robin and failing to qualify for the knockout stages of the tournament.
The NDHS Wildcats, on the other hand, managed to take a 3-2 record and squeak into the quarterfinals as the third seed in the other boy's pool. The Wildcats let a set slip away from them and lost their quarterfinal matchup to Plamondon.
“We lost a tough on there. We were up 14-12 and just let it slip through our fingers,” said head coach Daniel Dargis.
“We were down a couple of players. Our captain has a huge injury right now, so that is big for us. We managed to find out way around it though. We had other guys pick up their games; some of our second and third year players took the team up when our captain was down.”
Even though the team didn't advance to far this past weekend, Dargis has high hopes for his squad this year.
“This is our year,” said Dargis.”We have had the same five guys for the last three years; we have been building for this year. This is finally our year to do something.”
All four local volleyball teams will be off this coming weekend before getting back to regular season action in two weeks time.
