JV T-Bird Brady Harbin receives a serve during the club’s run to the zone championship held in Barrhead Nov. 2-3.
R.F. Staples School’s junior varsity boys and girls volleyball teams took their respective places on the podium in Barrhead last weekend with the boys taking home a gold medal and the girls earning a hard fought bronze in the North Central Zone Championships.
Barrhead Composite High School hosted the JV zones tourney welcoming four boys teams and eight girls teams over the Nov. 1-2 weekend.
The T-Birds boys finished second in the pool of four after losing to the host Barrhead team in two sets, 13-25 and 12-25. The boys then met up with Morinville Composite, winning in three sets, 21-25, 27-25 and 15-11 before beating up on Jasper 25-17 and 25-18.
The T-Birds then met up with Jasper High again in the semifinal match and won in two sets, earning their way into the gold medal game where they met once again with Morinville Composite and took out their rivals in two sets with scores of 25-22 and 25-23 to win the bracket and the zone championship.
The girls were also able to make the podium, getting off to a great start on the first day. They placed first in their pool defeating Parkland Composite from Edson in three sets, 25-19, 16-25 and 15-9; Hilltop High from Whitecourt in three sets, 25-27, 25-10 and 15-8; Thorhild Central in three sets, 25-20, 13-25 and 15-8; and Gerard Redmond Community Catholic, from Hinton, in straight sets, 25-11 and 25-12.
The next day, the team beat Holy Redeemer High from Edson for a great start to their Saturday, but fell to Morinville in the second round of the playoffs.
The T-Birds were pitted against Onoway in the bronze medal match, which they won to clinch the medal.
“Obviously, we got third, so we had a successful weekend with good competition,” said coach Danielle Snyder.
It was a great year for the girls who earned three medals over the volleyball season, winning gold at the R.F. Staples JV Invitational Tournament two weeks ago and a silver medal earlier in the season before that.
The bronze from zones completes their complement of multi-coloured medals.
“The team has improved a lot over the course of a very short season, two months,” said Snyder. “There’s been a lot of improvement and I’m just happy about their success and growth as players and as a team. You can’t do it without the whole team.”
