Senior girls volleyball coach Greg Kenyon is “really proud” of his team as they walked away from their home tournament last weekend with bronze medals.
The Revelstoke Secondary School Avalanche won their bronze-medal Last Spike match 2-1 (22-25, 27-25, 15-13) in a game characterized by strong blocking and serving.
The blocking is relatively new, said Kenyon. They’d just started practising it the week before.
“We’ve got some really good athletes,” he said. “Blocking is a really personally fulfilling thing for blockers, so when they get one, they really enjoy it.”
Bryn Hoshizaki started the first set off with two ace serves to set a strong tone for the rest of the game.
The team went straight from their semifinal loss (0-2 to Merritt) at RSS to Begbie View Elementary School for the bronze-medal game against the Vernon Christian School Royals.
“We played them yesterday,” said Kenyon, “and had another really good match.”
The Avalanche had lost in round-robin play in three sets.
Strong service wasn’t enough to carry the team and they fell in the first set 22-25.
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After a team huddle, the Avalanche were all laughs, hamming it up for a parent’s camera just off-court.
They fought hard in the second set and forced a tiebreaker after two strong serves from Kami Sharpe to win the set 27-25.
The Avalanche relied again on strong serving, blocking and some well-placed kills to win the tiebreaker set 15-13 and clinch the win.
The big tournament – zone championships – is still a few weeks away.
“So what we want to do is raise our game to team play,” said Kenyon, “and then practise that over the next few weeks.”
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