In volleyball action, City Girls Cyclones roared through Olds on the weekend, winning the OHS 2012 tournament undefeated. Having gone 10 straight sets without losing, besting Olds Gold in the semi-finals, the team swirled into the finals against Delburne White. The girls lost the first set, but rallied to take the second, and came away victorious with a 15-13 win in the third and final set.
With volleyball season having hit the midway point, local teams are starting to find their footing and tuning up their skills day by day.
“We've got incredible coaches that are working with every single athlete,” said Innisfail Jr./Sr. High School Athletics Director Jeff Anderson. “In a nutshell it's going awesome.”
The senior girls team had a solid showing in Leduc last weekend, finishing the round robin against Beaumont, Devon, Wetaskiwin and Calgary Academy in a three-way tie for second.
The Cyclones lost two close sets 23-25 and 21-25 against the top ranked Christ the King School. The tournament all-star picked by the host school was Innisfail's Sydney Daines.
In Chinook's Edge North Athletic Association play, the hard work of Innisfail's “Blue” on the practice court led to a 4-1 victory in Bowden Oct. 10.
Because 45 girls tried out, coaches split the players into two separate teams. The “Blue” team is coached by Whitney Oakley with Jocelyn Fehr as assistant coach. The “White” team is coached by Lorraine Uloth with Chelsea Lee assisting.
“They're developing and learning leaps and bounds,” said Anderson, noting the importance of teaching about “truly keeping that passion and love for the game.”
The drills are a crucial part of gearing up for playoffs the 2nd week in November.
The City Girls team won nail-biter of a match against the St. Thomas Saints. The Innisfail team won the first two sets, lost the second two, but came back to win the third 16-14. Though they lost to the Lacombe Lasers on Oct. 11, improvement is evident.
“Our girls are doing outstanding, long story short,” Anderson said. “They have a very good group of young ladies that's coming together”
Most of their foes are stacked with all Grade 9 players. Lindsay Thurber even has two Grade 9 teams.
The junior boys are going through a growth year, but the big accomplishment is that there's even a team at all.
“Boy's volleyball has been in huge decline in Central Alberta,” Anderson said. “We're trying to rebuild.”
Coaches are hoping six or seven players will stick around to form a solid core for next year's team. But in the meantime players are learning how to finesse their play, from where to set to how to block.
The senior girls are tightening up their performance on the court and have been looking for that breakthrough outing for some time now. On Oct. 9, they got the much-coveted win against Rocky Mountain House, dominating in three straight sets.
“They controlled that entire match,” said Anderson, who is their coach. “Hopefully we can build on that and the confidence will come.
Now the focus is on eliminating unforced errors.
“We make the other team earn every single point,” he said.
