St. Mary School’s senior boys volleyball team swam to gold in Hinton Oct. 27-28 while the seniors girls held steady in fifth.
The boys were undefeated in the round robin, battling courtside against host school Gerard Redmond Community Catholic School and its junior varsity team, Holy Redeemer out of Edson, and Ryley School from the central zone.
“It was an awesome weekend,” said boys coach Vance Nakonechny.
“It was nice to see some teams that we don’t normally play. I was very pleased with the result.”
The boys won the final against Gerard Redmond 25-17, 25-19.
However, the boys faced a little adversity from the hosts. Nakonechny said the host team played the Sharks really tight in the round robin.
“We were actually down 8-3 in the final game and came back and won it 15-13,” he said. “The boys showed a lot of composure. There wasn’t a lot of panic in their game, they weren’t getting down on each other. They really pulled together as a team.”
Overall, most of the games had a wide spread but with that being said, he saw that the boys weren’t playing down to the level of the weaker teams.
“I thought the boys stuck to what makes us exceptional,” he noted.
Although the senior girls finished fifth out of eight, coach Ty Snell said it was a huge improvement from last weekend.
“It was really good to see we were able to put together full games and not have a five- or six-point meltdown and then have to crawl our way back in the game,” he said. “We were able to be in the game for the full set, so that was nice to see.”
A few bright spots from the tournament were that the girls only missed one serve, a skill the team has been working on all season, and were battling hard against schools with strong volleyball programs.
“We also split a game with Living Waters, which was a really tough game,” Snell added. “The girls showed a lot of fight because this was a team that we had lost to in straight sets previously in our tournament last weekend.”
With only two tournaments left in the season he said the girls would be focusing on consistency, as well as basic skills like serving and receiving.
The boys are out in Thorhild this coming weekend on Nov. 3-4 while the girls head to Boyle for a red eye tournament on Nov. 10, then back to Boyle for zones the weekend after.
