The Estevan Elecs senior girls volleyball team started their season on a winning note this Saturday by capturing the B side championship at a University of Regina tournament.
Elecs head coach Myles Fichter said the team entered the 32-team tourney with only two weeks of practice, so from a coaching perspective the objective of the games was to work on the development of the team for the latter part of the season more than be concerned with how they place. He said they worked on team combinations and got all their players into the games in the round robin, where they went 1-2 and fell into the bottom 16.
“From there we won everything,” said Fichter. “We won the B side and we dominated in all of our matches. We won all four matches on Saturday in two sets, so in that scope I’m extremely pleased with the success of the team and the development of the team to this point.”
Fichter said the girls continued to work on refining their play entering the B side championship against Invermay, such as discussing things they needed to improve on from one match to the next. However, he said the Elecs level of execution in that match left no doubt as to the final result.
“At this level of play we probably had one of the highest amount of kills I’ve seen in a game,” he said. “We just literally blew the other team out in the second set. The first set was fairly competitive up to about seven points and the other team just seemed to fall off. They couldn’t keep pace with us with their defence. They just couldn’t stop our attack.”
The Elecs will play in a tournament basically every weekend except the Thanksgiving holiday until conference playoffs begin in November. Their first year head coach said he’s familiar with about half of the girls on the team as he coached them with the Estevan Extreme volleyball club over the past two years, but he doesn’t know what to expect from the whole group until he gets a better view of how the girls work together.
“You don’t really get a feel for it until you see them perform,” said Fichter. “Even in practice it’s tough until you’re actually in a game situation and you see how they respond (under) the pressure and unfamiliarity of an opponent.
“My assistant (Colin Tajcnar) is also a very experienced player and both of us were really pleasantly surprised at their level of execution as a team this weekend. The team far exceeded our expectations.”
