By Nathan Kanter

Vikings, Crusaders come up short at v-ball regionals

Nov 14, 2016 | 11:00 AM

They clawed their way back from a 24-20 deficit to win their opening set, but the North Battleford Comprehensive High School (NBCHS) Vikings senior girls volleyball team couldn’t come from behind the following two sets.

They lost in the quarter-finals against Prince Albert’s St. Mary High School on Saturday, Nov. 12 at the 5A regional girls volleyball championships on their home turf.

Despite the loss, Vikings head coach Jana Friedenstab said she wasn’t at all disappointed with the result since her team fought right until the end.

“I was so happy with the way they played that final game,” Friedenstab on Sunday. “With heart, with desire, with passion and that’s all I ask.

“Had they played like they did in the last two games we played on Saturday – had they played like that all year long – we would have been more than just in the middle of the pack at tournaments. We would have been in medal contention. I am not at all disappointed. They just really rose to the challenge.”

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Friedenstab said the quarter-final loss was frustrating because they’d actually played better as the game went on.

But in the end, poor passing was their downfall.

“We just started slow in every set but St. Mary didn’t play a better second half, we did,” she said. “The serving game was fine but our passing game, it wasn’t on par at all … so we [could] only set our left side hitter basically on a bad pass so we just kind of struggled with the passing.”

Passing is something the Vikings have worked on consistently in practice this season.

“We’re notoriously not the best passing team, that’s for sure,” Friedenstab said. “I go with three passers in our serve-receive … [and] going in practice we just really tried to find who those best passers were and having them in the serve-receive pattern all the time, but I mean still we’ve struggled with passing. So if we can’t pass, it’s pretty hard to run an offence.”

The junior Vikings girls team won districts this season, and many of them will now look to make their mark on the senior team next season.

Friedenstab has already coached a lot of those players in club volleyball and knows them well.

“I’ve coached all of them since they were probably in Grade 6,” she said. “[Junior coach Jeff] Gibson is going to help me next year coach the senior team so we’ll have some decisions to make come tryouts for sure.”

The John Paul II Collegiate Crusaders were also at the tournament, though they didn’t make it past the round robin.

But just like Friedenstab, Crusaders head coach Shari Dueck was extremely proud of her team.

“The girls played fantastic both Friday and Saturday,” Dueck said. “Saturday especially, the girls played really well on defence and their service game was right on par and they were doing exactly what they needed to do. They never gave up, they pushed every single point.”

The Crusaders had a team of mostly Grade 10 students, which has Dueck excited for what’s to come.

“I think that moving forward they’ll really know what it takes to be successful,” Dueck said. “We had so many new girls join the team this year so a lot of it was figuring out what senior volleyball is like and how to play together as a team and play at that next level.”

The three qualifying teams moving on to provincials are Warman, P.A. Carlton and P.A. St. Mary, who finished first, second, and third, respectively.

Nathan Kanter is battlefordsNOW’s sports reporter and voice of the Battlefords North Stars. He can be reached at Nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca or tweet him @NathanKanter11