With most schools wrapping up their volleyball seasons and heading into basketball preseason, Sacred Heart's boys volleyball team has one more weekend as they went to Melville for 4A Regionals this past weekend and advanced to the Provincial Championships.
The Saints Senior Boys Volleyball team competed in Melville in a six team tournament to determine who would be the three seeds to come out of their region. Oxbow, Kipling and Kamsack were placed in Pool A; while Melville Comprehensive, Sacred Heart and Esterhazy made up Pool B. The gold, silver, and bronze winners of the tournament would advance to the Provincial Championship on November 23-24.
After round robin play Oxbow took first in Pool A, Kipling placed second and Kamsack took the last spot. Sacred Heart took 1st in Pool A after a strong round robin performance, Esterhazy took second and MCS placed last in the group. Only the top two teams from the round robin moved onto the playoffs eliminating Kamsack and MCS from contention and setting up Oxbow-Ezterhazy in the semi finals and Sacred taking on Kipling in the other Pool A Vs.Pool B semifinal matchup.
In the 1st semi-final match, Oxbow defeated Esterhazy in two straight sets to advance to the Regional Final and secure a spot in the Provincial Championships.
Sacred then faced Kipling with a chance to secure their ticket to the big dance. Both teams fought extremely hard exchanging points throughout the sets with 25-23 and 22-25 scores in the first two sets setting up a third set with a guarantee to next weekend on the line. Sacred won the final set convincingly 25-17 to advance to play Oxbow in the final and to lock up a berth to the final tournament next weekend.
In the gold match the Saints faced Oxbow. Sacred Heart played the late semifinal match which gave Oxbow an advantage as they were well rested and waiting for the Saints who just played a grueling three set match to get into the final.
The Saints team ran out of gas and was overtaken by Oxbow in two sets 14-25 and 10-25 giving Oxbow Regional gold and the Saints settling for silver but accomplishing the all important goal of advancing to provincials.
The third seat to provincials went to Esterhazy, who eliminated Kipling in the bronze match. Oxbow, Sacred Heart and Esterhazy now advance to the provincial tournament in Nipawin as part of the ten team, two pool tournament. Last season the region had great success as Oxbow took gold at Provincials and the Saints took fourth place after losing in the bronze medal match.
The finish marks the second straight year that the Saints have advanced to the Provincial Championship, something coach Curtis Moen takes pride in "I am very proud of the team to advance to Provincials two years in a row," said Moen.
Moen pointed out four key players on the weekend mentioning Derek Marshall's passing, Colin Shewchuk's setting, Jaedon Pellatt's hitting and Brendon Walkington's blocking at the net as key contributions on the weekend.
Moen noted that the Saints going into provincials will be a much different team than the one during the season as he finally has his entire roster committed to the team for the final stretch. "We have a strong group of grade 12's, but we have been very inconsistent this season as many of the players have missed tournaments for football or soccer. I now have the full squad focused on provincials and we look forward to fine tuning the team before leaving for Nipawin."
