YSAA Supervolley Titles Claimed

The F.H. Warriors senior girls volleyball team kept the crowd engaged at the Supervolley finals Friday night.

The visiting team took out the Porter Creek Rams in five sets to take their first Supervolley title in recent memory.

“Feels good. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever been in the Supervolley finals, let alone win,” said coach Adam Robinson. “Feels good. Feels nice. The girls are pretty happy.”

The Warriors won the first set 25-23, before dropping the next two 25-21 and 25-17.

“The girls just stopped communicating, stopped celebrating,” said Robinson. “In volleyball, when you’re not communicating, it’s hard to do everything right. When you’re not celebrating the little victories, it just makes it that much harder.

“They didn’t start communicating until halfway through the fourth set and that’s when we started to play better.”

Their win in the fourth set forced the game into an extra set, which they won narrowly by three points.

“It feels so good,” said tournament MVP Katelyn Holway of the Warriors. “We worked really hard for this win.”

The Warriors struggled with errors, as they gave point after point to the Rams in a musical chairs rotation problem.

“We weren’t really sure how to fix it, so that really set us back,” said Holway.

But the Warriors prevailed, working together as a team.

“You just really want to keep your momentum up,” said Holway. “You want to just be excited, loud and try to dominate over the other team.”

Rams coach Kim Hickman said small errors cost her team the win.

“It’s always a battle with F.H. and it really just came down to a couple small errors by our team and that was the difference in the game,” she said.

But she said it was the best she’s seen the Rams play all season.

“No coach wants to lose, but if you do lose, then that’s the way you want to lose,” she said.

The Rams and Warriors are likely to meet next at the Yukon Championships Nov. 24-26.

Coach Mike Kelly has three weeks to figure out how to get his F.H. Warriors senior boys volleyball players to play as a team.

“It feels like our team is just a lot of really great individual players that can’t play together as a team,” said Kelly following Friday night’s loss to the Porter Creek Rams. “I don’t really know what to do.”

The Warriors, who won their first Supervolley title in 2013 were unable to muster the momentum in the final after they dispatched last year’s winners, the Vanier Crusaders in the semifinals the night before.

Playing on home court, the Porter Creek Rams won the Supervolley final 3-1.

The Rams took the first two sets 25-17 and 25-19, dropping the third to the Warriors 25-22, before picking up the fourth 25-20 for the win.

Rams coach Derick Bilodeau said his team didn’t make too many errors.

“We were confident in our abilities,” he said after the win.

The attempted F.H. comeback in the third set came after Kelly received a yellow card from referee Michael Hanson late in the second set.

Kelly called out to Hanson and mimed wiping glasses clean as the score stood 21-16 for the Rams.

“The referee is always a big factor and we always try to make sure we earn or lose the points and not have the ref make the calls,” said Kelly. “There was definitely a lot of calls both ways tonight and it’s not as fun to watch and be part of those games.”

Grade 12 Rams player Jon Amos was all smiles following the game.

“I thought it went so well. We really pulled together as a team tonight,” he said. “We just worked really well together and when we got down we came in as a team.”

The Rams were strong for much of the game, controlling the pace from the outset.

The third set slip was the only blemish on their final record.

“F.H. Collins is a good team, so we expected them to push back and make a good show and put up a fight and they did exactly that,” said Bilodeau.

The teams now look towards the Yukon Championships, being held Nov. 24 to 26.

“Honestly our team, we’re feeling really, really excited. Not so nervous, just really excited to be able to play in it,” said Amos. “(There’s) definitely going to be competition there.”