For a fourth-straight year, R.F. Staples’ senior girls volleyball team has left the Whitecourt tournament as champions.
Playing in their third tournament of the season, the girls defeated all comers in winning the tournament, even if the final match was by no means a cakewalk.
Coach Keith Szautner called the three-set marathon against Peace River a “really, really close and exciting match,” and the scores certainly don’t disagree.
In the first set, the T-Birds scratched their way to a 26-24 win. In the second, Peace River turned the tables and came away with their own 26-24 win. That set up the deciding set, which once again ended by the slimmest of margins — a 15-13 win by the T-Birds.
“Every single game was very tight all the way along,” Szautner said. “It’s a really good sign by our girls to hang in there and win those kinds of matches.”
Even though the team was able to earn the win, Szautner said he saw hints of the team’s problems in Camrose last weekend creeping into their game.
“Again in the finals here this weekend, we stopped attacking,” he said. “Our offence stopped clicking. The girls were just trying to make sure they got balls in play instead of taking more aggressive swings at good plays.”
Making sure that doesn’t happen again, or at least happens a lot less often, is something Szautner said he’s going to work on as the season progresses.
“When we play with that aggressiveness on offence we’re a much better team and we’re pretty tough to play against.”
In getting to the final, the T-Birds first had to get through Louis St. Laurent out of Edmonton.
“It might have been the best match we’ve played this year,” Szautner said.
The T-Birds swept the match in two sets, including a 25-13 second-set decision, which Szautner said is a huge margin of victory against a strong opponent in volleyball.
Critical to the T-Birds’ win over Louis St. Laurent was Briana Carlyon, who played a superb match, Szautner said. She was all over the place making blocks and just plain frustrating her opponents.
Prior to the semifinals, the T-Birds took out Drayton Valley in straight sets in the quarterfinals on Saturday and went undefeated in the round robin on Friday.
Up next for the T-Birds is a tournament in Spruce Grove this weekend. It’s a much higher-level tournament than Whitecourt and will test how ready the girls are to challenge for the zone title at the end of the season.
“There’s going to be little higher caliber teams to compete against, which will be a good thing because we’ll have to be playing our best and stay aggressive all the way through to be successful,” Szautner said.
