The Stonewall Rams Varsity Girls volleyball team came up just short of a provincial championship on Saturday.
Competing in ‘AAA’ provincials at Westgate Mennonite Collegiate, the Rams made an incredible run to the championship game, ultimately falling in two sets to the Westgate Wings.
After a season in which the Rams were a top team provincially all season long, the loss in the championship has left a bitter taste in the mouths of the Rams players and coaching staff who thought they might be celebrating a provincial championship instead right now.
“Right now, Saturday feels like a huge disappointment,” said head coach Curtis Grieve. “But I have talked to some people and said a week from now you won’t really be feeling the pain of the loss but you’ll be able to celebrate the fact that you are second in the province and had a wonderful season and weekend.”
It was a wonderful season for the Rams, who seemingly got better as it went on.
Their provincials run started by finishing second in the tournament’s top pool before they eliminated the Virden Bears and W.C. Miller Aces in the knockout round.
Westgate, however, was the one team that seemed to have the Rams’ number all throughout the provincial weekend, beating them in straight sets in both the round-robin and championship games en route to an undefeated provincial.
“They don’t make a lot of mistakes and in the final they played one of their best games of the season,” said Grieve. “They only missed one serve all game. We served pretty well but they were able to receive and play good defence all game. The matchup was fair for us but their game was outstanding. You tip your hat to them. I don’t think they could have played any better. Not that we were off but they just executed a little better than us.”
Following this season, the Rams will unfortunately be without the services of grade 12’s Shannon Bodnarus, Alycia Galbraith, Ruby Harrisko, and Natasha Schultz who were the team’s leaders on and off the court this season.
Grieve said he hasn’t thought much about next year, though he knows he will inherit a strong group of players from the junior varsity team that was provincially ranked this season.
He will also have nine players eligible to return from the varsity team who now hold important provincial experience.
“Seeing the success of our junior varsity team this year who played in the third place game at provincials and were ranked in the top five throughout the season, there’s a lot of positives moving forward,” said Grieve. “I haven’t really looked too far into the future. We are taking some time to celebrate what the varsity girls were able to do. I said it in our postgame meeting, we were blessed to have four grade 12 girls who all demonstrated their leadership in different ways and were overly committed to our team. The biggest part is they are four fantastic people, great teammates, as well as great players.”
