Two of the four Westlock volleyball teams entered in the 2018 Joe Nestorovich Tournament made it to the playoffs, but lost out in the playoff semifinals.
St. Mary School hosted the annual tournament, named after the former school custodian and diehard high school sports fan, Oct. 19-20 at the Rotary Spirit Centre.
The St. Mary senior girls and the R.F. Staples junior varsity boys each made it to the playoffs, but bowed out after each of their semifinal matches.
The girls won seven sets and lost seven sets in the round robin portion of the tournament, losing their two-set matches with Thorhild and Anzac, splitting their matches with Living Waters and Covenant Canadian Reformed School (CCRS) and winning both sets against each of the Holy Redeemer and R.F. Staples’ junior varsity squads.
“We actually made the playoffs by the skin of our teeth,” said coach Ty Snell. “There was a three-way tie for fourth place, so we just squeaked in and ended up losing in the semifinals to Anzac in three sets.”
The team made the playoffs by virtue of their winning record against the other two teams vying for playoff contention, said Snell.
“Overall, we had a pretty strong weekend. We were missing a couple key players, so having said that, we did pretty well, all things considered,” he said. “We had a really good serving game this weekend, which was good because that’s kind of something we’ve been struggling with.”
The St. Mary senior boys weren’t quite as lucky, winning three sets and losing nine and just missing the playoffs.
The boys split their matches with Barrhead’s junior varsity team, Redwater and Anzac, but they lost in straight sets to R.F. Staples’ junior varsity team, Thorhild and CCRS.
“We placed fifth and just missed the playoffs,” said coach Vance Nakonechny.
“We’ve had a bit of a disjointed start, we haven’t played for a month and sometimes in a small school you have a lot of kids doing all the activities, so we’ve had a hard time getting guys together for practice because they’re involved in other events.”
Despite some of the more experienced players being away for parts of the tournament, Nakonechny gave praise to his younger players who stepped up in their absence.
“I was quite pleased with how the younger players, especially those new to high school volleyball, grew a lot this weekend. You could really see the improvement,” said Nakonechny. “There’s positives on the horizon for sure.”
The R.F. Staples JV boys also made it into the playoffs on their side of the tournament, but like the St. Mary girls, bowed out in the first round. The JV boys won five sets while losing seven. They beat St. Mary and the Barrhead JV team in straight sets, but lost to Anzac, Thorhild and CCRS.
R.F. Staples JV girls had a tough go of it, winning only one set over the weekend against Holy Redeemer.
