All R.F. Staples volleyball teams were in action this weekend with the senior high teams playing in Athabasca, while the junior high clubs were in St. Albert.
The senior girls managed a respectable ninth place at their tournament, while the boys came home with a Top 5 finish. The girls played six games over two days with two wins over Fort McMurray and Fort Saskatchewan.
Girls coach Steve Womack was mixed about the team’s result, but positive about aspects of their play.
“We didn’t do as well as we wanted to which is fine at this point of the year,” Womack said.
“So far this year we haven’t had a lot of success on the scoreboard, but this is the first weekend I think we saw them really start to work together as a team and communicate more.”
Down in St. Albert the junior high boys finished third at the St. Albert Physical Education Council (SAPEC) junior high volleyball tournament.
After going down fighting to Morinville in the semifinal, the squad rebounded to grab bronze over Lorne Akins Junior High.
While they dropped the first set of the third-place playoff 25-22, and were pretty tired and a little let down, they were able to refocus.
The team bounced back to win the next two sets 26-24 and 15-13 to claim the bronze medal.
“That certainly wasn’t our best volleyball of the weekend, but they were able to pull it together at the end,” said coach Kyle Beattie. “I’m pretty proud of their finish, considering the calibre of volleyball that you get with the city schools.
“We enter this tournament every year, but this is our highest placing in quite a while.”
Earlier in the event the team had swept the group stage with wins over Muir Lake, Ecole Secondaire Sainte Marguerite d’Youville, Elmer S. Gish and that put them into the finals where they continued their run by defeating Namao and Greystone.
That brought them up against Morinville in the semifinal.
Yet it wasn’t to be and the T-Birds ended up dropping both sets 25-20 and 25-19 to send Morinville to the final.
“MCHS was a tough game,” Beattie said. “We actually played pretty good, and were able to keep the games close until the end, but they’ve got some really big kids that we just didn’t have an answer for.”
At the same tournament, the junior girls picked up two wins on the consolation side of the draw.
The T-Birds put down WD Cuts and RS Fowler on the way to the consolation final where they battled Morinville for ninth place.
Despite wining the first set, they lost the next two.
“All of their playoff matches required a deciding third set, so the girls were pretty exhausted by the end of the day,” said coach Kendall Ducharme.
Earlier the team dropped two of their three matches in the round robin going down to Sir George Simpson and Meridian Heights School but picking up the victory over RS Fowler.
Unfortunately that wasn’t enough to make it to the main final draw and the team ended up fourth in their pool due to the tie breaking procedure.
