The Westlock Thunderbirds senior boys volleyball team went undefeated to claim a gold medal at a tournament in Athabasca last weekend.
Coach Steve McKenna said a lot of it had to do with the teamwork the boys showed on the court, both during the round-robin and the playoffs.
“They played an all around good team game,” he said. “They did all the simple things right and worked well as a team.”
While the team’s victory wasn’t a complete blowout, with scores of 25-19 and 25-20 over Bawlf in the final, there were very few instances where they felt truly threatened by their opponents.
Some of that may have had to do with the makeup of the 12-team tournament, which had some 1A and 2A schools competing with the larger 3A schools.
The Thunderbirds struggled a bit against Athabasca in the semifinals, but McKenna said that had more to do with how the Thunderbirds played than how their opponents played.
“I think we allowed them into the game,” he said. “We’d have five-point runs then have mental lapses with something as simple as just hitting the ball, then we’d give them five points back.”
Nonetheless, Westlock won that game with scores of 25-20 and 25-19.
The round-robin portion of the tournament didn’t present many challenges, either, with just Bawlf presenting a threat to a Thunderbird victory.
“They’re a good team. They’re well-coached and they’ve got some really good players,” McKenna said. “The guys really had to elevate their game for this one.”
Although some mistakes were made over the weekend, McKenna said the important thing is that the players recognized them and even before being asked were talking about what they need to work on and do differently moving forward.
“What it did was open their eyes about some of the things they’ll have to do fairly quickly to compete with some of the better teams,” he said.
That renewed focus comes not a week too soon, with a big three-day tournament in Morinville coming up this weekend — a tournament that will see the T-Birds face some stiff competition from some of the larger schools in Edmonton.
McKenna knows, however, that if the team executes their game correctly they will put up a good showing — and the team knows it as well.
“Every tournament except for one at the very beginning of the year, we’ve made the finals,” he said. “The guys have nothing but confidence.”
