A group of nine Westlock volleyball players are bringing back a silver medal from Leduc, where they were competing in the Men’s ‘B’ Provincial tournament on April 2-3.
“We were just a collection of nine guys from Westlock,” said Rick Sereda, one of those guys. “Most of us hadn’t played much all year. We had a few practices and went to the tournament.”
The tournament took place over two days, with the round robin portion played on Saturday, and the playoff rounds on Sunday.
In Saturday’s round robin play, the Westlock men went up against a team from Lac La Biche and two teams from Edmonton.
They defeated their Lac La Biche opponents in straight sets, before splitting their two matches with the Edmonton teams, each one in straight sets.
Those results put them in second place in their pool heading into Sunday’s playoff round.
In their semifinal match Sunday morning against yet another Edmonton team, the Westlock men once again shut down their opponents en route to another straight sets victory.
From there it was off to the gold-medal match, against the fourth Edmonton-based team the men faced in the tournament.
“We played a very close final with the Edmonton team,” Sereda said.
The match was also the first one all weekend the Westlock men played that did not end in two sets. After splitting the first two sets, it came down to the third and deciding set for provincial glory.
Unfortunately, it was not Westlock’s day, as the team lost the final set 20-18, “which is as close as you can get in volleyball,” Sereda said.
The loss brings to an end the indoor volleyball season for the men, he said. There will be no follow-up tournaments, and this holds true even if the team had been able to change its fortunes in that final set, he said.
“It was a one-shot deal,” he said. “It was an opportunity for us to get together and play.”
The team is composed of nine men of varying ages who at one time or another played volleyball or were involved with the sport in Westlock.
“It’s a real range of guys,” Sereda said. “I’m the old guy at 48, and we have Grade 12 players from R.F. as well. You don’t usually see that mixed bag of ages on these teams.”
Sereda said Sheldon McConaghy was the motivating force behind getting the team together, drawing in ex-players and others who were playing in co-ed leagues.
“We had talked about playing because we hadn’t played for a while,” Sereda said.
Unlike club volleyball, there are not many tournaments for men’s teams like this one, he said. Instead, most players will play co-ed volleyball with university or college teams. When those seasons are over, he said they will often come together on a team like this one did and enter a provincial tournament.
Sereda also coaches a U-18 volleyball team in Westlock. The team is scheduled to play its final tournament of the year April 9-10 in Calgary.
Afterwards, it will continue to practice in preparation for the provincial tournament to be held in Calgary the last weekend in April.
