Skip to content

Barrhead boys take silver in first tournament

The Barrhead Jags boys’ volleyball team came away with silver medals from their first tournament of the year: a one-day tournament hosted on Saturday at Barrhead Composite High School.
IMG_2136
Owen Stoik jumps up to spike the ball over the net while playing Onoway in the round robin. The Barrhead Jags finished third in their pool.

The Barrhead Jags boys’ volleyball team came away with silver medals from their first tournament of the year: a one-day tournament hosted on Saturday at Barrhead Composite High School.

While the Barrhead boys fell short in the final versus Neerlandia Public Christian School, their counterparts on the girls’ volleyball team fell in the first playoff round versus Pembina North Community School, who went on to win silver themselves.

During round robin action, the Barrhead boys ended up finishing third in their pool.

They lost out to Onoway in three sets (22-25, 25-9, 13-15) and to Blueberry School from Stony Plain in three sets (25-17, 15-25, 3-15), but managed to score a victory against St. Mary School in two sets (25-16, 25-15).

That put them into the first playoff round versus Pembina North Community School (PNCS). Although the Pembina Panthers won the first set 25-18, the Jags went on to win the second set 25-21 and the third set 15-12.

The Jags’ opponent in the semi-final was Blueberry, who had eliminated Edwin Parr Composite from Athabasca in the first playoff round. Barrhead ended up splitting the first two sets 25-11 and 24-26 before going on to win the third set 15-11.

Now vying for the championship, Barrhead faced off with Neerlandia Public Christian School (NPCS). Neerlandia won the first set but Barrhead rallied to win the second by a score of 25-22.

In the third set, Neerlandia was able to quickly take the lead, and although Barrhead showed signs of a comeback, the NPCS Eagles took the match with a final 15-12 victory.

Although the boys didn’t win the tournament, coach Barb Sabiston said she thought it was “pretty terrific” that the boys came in third in their pool and were still able to fight their way to the championship, where they lost in three sets.

“(These were) our first games. We were still doing rotation on Tuesday,” she said.

“They come such a long way in just the one day. (They showed) so much growth.”

Learning curve

The Barrhead girls’ squad had a similar start to the boys, finishing third in their pool. While they lost in two sets to Onoway (15-25, 23-25), they were able to down Eleanor Hall in two sets of 25-17 and split with St. Mary (25-16, 7-25).

That was good enough to put the Jags into a playoff round against PNCS. The Jags and Panthers split the first two sets, but the Pembina Panthers jumped out to a huge lead in the third set.

Barrhead didn’t give up easily, managing to rally from a six-point deficit, but PNCS was still able to edge out the Jags by a score of 27-25.

Coach Kevin Geinger said that for a lot of the girls, this was their first time they had every played in a competitive volleyball tournament.

He noted they only have four returning players and all three coaches are new to the team.

“We got better as the day went on, but we have at least three or more gears to hit before we reach our potential,” he said.

Geinger said there is a lot of skill and potential on this squad; it’s just going to be a matter of figuring out how thier system works and figuring out how they mesh as a team.

“Then we’re going to be a force to be reckoned with by the end of the year,” he said.

As noted earlier, PNCS would eventually go on to challenge Neerlandia in the championship final. Here, the Panthers ran out of steam, losing out to NPCS in two sets of 25-20 and 25-8.

See next week’s edition of the Leader for pictures of the two winning NPCS teams.

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks