The Westlock Wave girls 18 and under volleyball team wrapped its season with a seventh place finish in Division Two at the Alberta Volleyball Provincial Championships April 30 to May 1 in Calgary.
“The girls had their best weekend of the season,” said coach Keith Szautner. “It was a good time to do it at provincials.”
With the season now over, most on the team have played the last game of their high school volleyball careers, he said, as they will be graduating.
The Wave started the two-day tournament by going undefeated in its two round robin matches on the Saturday. Those wins gave the team first place in its pool heading into the playoff round, Szautner said.
Saturday evening saw the Wave play their first playoff game, which placed them on the ‘A’ side of the draw.
The Wave followed that up with a three-set win Sunday morning that moved them into the quarterfinals against the Camrose Vikings.
However, that would be as far as the team would go, as they dropped their quarterfinal match in three sets, sending them to the fifth-place game.
Up against the FOG Force, the Wave would drop the match in straight sets to finish in seventh place.
Despite the result, Szautner said it was nice to see the girls play as well as they did in the season’s final tournament.
“This was the best one we did, so that’s a good sign,” he said. “The girls stepped up and did really well.”
The Wave consists of eight players, he said, but only seven were able to make the trip south to compete.
“That was a bit of a factor,” he said. “We were getting tired by the end of the day, but I’m not going to use that as an excuse.”
This was the team’s fourth tournament of the year, with the other three being used as stepping stones to build towards provincials, Szautner said.
“The season had its ups and downs,” he said, adding his overriding feeling is that the season was a success because the team had its best showing in the last tournament of the year.
