Three senior boys volleyball teams from southern Saskatchewan, including the hometown Elecs, have earned a chance to compete for a provincial championship this weekend in Regina.
The Estevan Comprehensive School (ECS) Elecs, Swift Current Comprehensive High School Colts and Weyburn Comprehensive School Eagles got the provincial championship berths by capturing the top-three spots at the Saskatchewan High Schools Athletic Association (SHSAA) 5A Regional Volleyball Championships that was held at ECS on Friday and Saturday. The Colts finished in first place at regionals besting the Eagles 20-25, 25-19 and 15-10 in the championship game, while the Elecs scored the third spot with a dominant 25-17, 25-14 win over Balgonie’s Greenall High School Griffins in the three-versus-four game.
“We’ve played them before and we knew they had two good corner hitters, so we tried to watch them a lot and make sure our blocks were big wherever they went,” said Elecs left side Jordan Fichter. “If we lost that game we wouldn’t play volleyball, as Grade 12s, for the rest of our high school career, so we made sure we came out with everything we had.”
The Elecs went 1-1 in round-robin play at regionals before tallying a 25-10, 25-16 win over Moose Jaw’s Central Collegiate Cyclones in the quarter-finals and a 19-25, 25-27 loss to the Eagles in the semifinals to lock them into the third-place game. A strong start propelled the Elecs to a quick 7-2 lead over the Griffins, which they increased to 10-4 on a strong serve by Fichter and a kill by Wyatt Haux.
The corners work of Haux and Shae Little coupled with a strong defensive game by Preston Audet and Justin Van Achte proved too strong for the Griffins to handle for the rest of the set that had Logan Stepp providing the winning point with a block on Griffins middle Adyn Bylsma. The Elecs continued to click in the second set jumping out to a 6-1 lead on a number of Griffins errors and didn’t look back from there. Fichter notched the winning point on an ace down the sideline.
“We had great passing throughout the entire game,” said Fichter. “A couple bloops, but we always bounced back right after.”
The Colts went 2-0 and the Eagles went 3-0 in the round robin with Swift Current advancing to the final on a 25-10, 25-16 semifinal win over the Griffins and the Eagles earning the shot with the playoff victory against the Elecs.
The first set between the two teams was back and forth with the Colts first gaining a multiple-point lead at 10-6 on the serve of Logan Fritzke. The Eagles battled back eventually taking a 21-16 lead off a tip by Walter Happ past a couple of Colts blockers before Paul Dionne sealed the win on a spike from the corner.
The Eagles gained the lead early in the second set only to have the Colts come back half way through the frame on the serve of Dayton Patzer. The aggressive attack of Patzer, Henry Rempel and Braedon Friesen then paced Swift Current to the second set win.
“Before the tournament we decided we’d like to force a lot of middles,” said Friesen. So, at the “start of the games we’d always force middles even if it wasn’t always there and it worked, got us a lot of points. Then throughout the game we started mixing it outside and come back into the middle and just always go in different spots and it helped us out.”
Like the previous two sets, the third and deciding stanza was a tough battle between the two evenly matched squads. The Colts gained the early lead on the serve of Jay Schwartz before Dionne got the Eagles back into the driver’s seat with his strong play at the net. Swift Current made the push for the win late in the set with Quinn Hodges notching two straight points from the corner before Rempel scored the winner on his serve.
“Swift is a really good team,” said Eagles left side Spencer Anderson. “They’re going to be contenders for sure. We just didn’t come together in the third set. It kind of fell apart, but I’m really proud of my boys for making provincials. That was the big picture here.”
The SHSAA 5A Provincial Volleyball Championships on Friday and Saturday at Regina’s Miller Comprehensive High School will pit the Eagles, Colts and Elecs against clubs from Saskatoon’s Holy Cross High School and St. Joseph High School, Regina’s Dr. Martin LeBoldus High School and the host team, Prince Albert’s St. Mary High School and Carleton Comprehensive High School and Meadow Lake’s Carpenter High School. Fichter said most of the 10 teams have played each other in tournaments over the course of the season and the belief in the Elecs dressing room is they have a good shot at improving on their fifth-place showing in 2015 this time around.
“I think, for sure, we can definitely come out of it with a medal.”
