NEWS

15U Boys experience Tier 1

By: Bren

Finishing second at our last tournament, ensured us the opportunity to advance to tier 1. Soon to play the best teams in all of Ontario and arguable some of the better teams in all of Canada! Boy, we were in for a shock. After driving down Friday morning and having a team supper at Montana's that night, we felt that we were in the right mind set to embark on our journey into tier 1. We woke up Saturday morning, (A bit later that we would have liked. Never can trust those wake up calls!), ate breakfast and made our way to the school that would be hosting 2007's 15U Bugarski Cup. By this point we were feeling good and ready to face whatever was in store for us. Well, almost everything. We stepped in that gym and I do think that every one of our jaws dropped. Warming up on the other side of the court was something to shatter all confidence we had built up. Standing there, standing at about 8 foot 7 each, the best team in all of Ontario (the eventual winners of the tournament) was The Forest City Green. "No way could these guys be 15U!" or as Ian put it "Forest City was CLEARLY on steroids". They had the advantage in size, experience and confidence. It showed. We lost is straight sets. On the bright side we now had one game in the tier 1 level under out belts and we felt good about that.

We then immediately played the Waterloo Tigers ranked 5th coming into this tourney. This game was one game that we should have won with little difficulty. We again lost in straight sets. The first set we started off poorly and weren't able to recover. The second set was a much closer fought battle, but once again the Waterloo Tigers came out on top.

This was not the way we wanted to start our tournament. We all agreed that we were out matched by the Forest City Green, but we all were a bit disappointed with our match versus The Waterloo Tigers. After two straight games in the morning we then had a game off where we sat and reflected on the morning's pros and cons. We also had a delicious lunch and thank you to all the parents (mom's especially) who put together some great sandwiches for the team. I like to call them Yummy Mummy Sandwiches!

After the lunch break we got back to the court and for the first time in the whole day, a giant sigh of relief came over us. Our next opponent was Riverside, a B team. Nevertheless it gave us confidence. We started off the first set strong and outplayed them, eventually winning the set. The second set was not one of our better matches and if not for Ian's absolutely incredible spike there was little to cheer about. It was a 31, set (Connor) and hit (Ian) to perfection. (Not to mention great hit coverage on the part of Brendan) We finally won in the 3rd set. That improved confidence carried over to our next game against the top team in Ontario going into the tournament, the Crush. The Crush were not a huge team but for what they lacked in size they made up for with skill and court smarts. We lost the first set in no time at all but the second was a different story. We kept it close for the large majority of the game and at one point we were down only 19-15 in large part thanks to Mark's play at his new found position offside coming up with some huge blocks(Good Coaching Deb!). It was at this point that the top team in all Ontario and one of the better teams in Canada called a timeout. However 19-15 is the closest we would get. We left the court with our heads high not feeling too rejected and we prepared for our next game against Waterloo…..again/

We had managed to find ourselves playing for 5th place against the Waterloo Tigers. We knew that we could beat this team and it showed. We dominated and won the first set. This was a memorable set thanks to a bloody nose courtesy of me which I franticly tried to hide from the ref. It resulted in me making a couple of bathroom dashes to tend to my wounds. I was however able to finish out the game albeit with a piece of toilet paper lodged in my nose (Which fell out twice)! Anyways, back to the game…. We blew too many leads in the second set and let it slip away, forcing a third and final set. That too we let get away from us but not before a golf ball rolled across the court robbing us of a sure point, just as Ian had hit the ball down to halt Waterloo's 4 point straight streak. The ref called a reserve and Waterloo proceeded to serve a couple more points on us. It was a heartbreaker, losing to a team that we knew we could beat (Blame it on the golf ball; blame it on the golf ball!). We finished 6th, the 6th ranked team in all of Ontario. Not too shabby. In our first tier 1 tournament we demonstrated that we belong and that we can compete with the elite. It was a great experience. We look forward to tier 1 provincials and we are confident that we can finish near the top of the standings. READY BOYSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS...oh Everett.

 

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