The Stonewall Rams varsity girls’ volleyball team is still alive in the WWAC Tier 1 playoffs after Thursday’s quarterfinal win over the Westwood Warriors.
The Rams entered the game at Westwood as slight underdogs after finishing the regular season one spot back of them in the standings.
After going back and forth and splitting the first four sets, the Rams won the fifth and final set by a score of 15-8.
With the win, they eliminated the Warriors and advanced to the WWAC semi-finals on Wednesday, where they will take on the undefeated Vincent Massey Trojans.
“We’ve got a lot of interchangeable pieces,” said Rams coach Curtis Grieve about his team on Friday. “We’ve got players that have come in and done some really special stuff for us. Against Westwood, Kamryn Hunnam came in and served out the win for us. She came through for us. It was a pretty special performance for her off the bench. We’ve gotten timely performances from our players. The other success is these girls are truly good people and have a really good team chemistry. They cheer for each other, practice for each other, and that contributes a lot to being successful. If it’s a happy and healthy place to play, teams will play to the best of their ability.”
Their matchup against the Trojans will be the second time the two have faced each other this season. On Oct. 28, the Trojans defeated the Rams in four sets in their regular-season finale.
This time, the Rams are carrying the momentum of wins in their last two games, along with a stellar performance at the Spartan Dig Tournament in Brandon last weekend in which they almost upset Brandon’s Vincent Massey Vikings, who are currently ranked the number one team in the province.
“Right now, we’ve got a strong belief in what we can do,” said Grieve. “We’ve got a really good crew of leadership on our team and our girls are a really close knit group that love to play the game. We need to limit our unforced errors like any good volleyball team. We can’t make costly mistakes that we don’t normally make. The one thing against them is we need to serve very tough and get them out of system. That’s one of the things we were successful with against Westwood.”
The semi-final against the Trojans will go at 4:30 p.m. this Wednesday at Vincent Massey Collegiate.
The winner will move on to the WWAC final, a game the Rams have never won at any level before.
Other news for the Rams this week was the Dairy Farmers of Manitoba Athlete of the Week Award being awarded to Rams setter Ruby Harrisko.
Harrisko, the Rams’ captain, was given the award after her stellar performance at the Spartan Dig Tournament in Brandon last weekend, during which she helped the Rams to a second-place finish.
“Ruby’s one of the most competitive people on the court,” said Grieve. “You’d watch and see she’s always smiling and having fun. She’s the greatest teammate but when push comes to shove nobody wants to win more than her. She competes, she has extremely high volleyball IQ, and as a setter, she puts us in positions where we can score.”
