It was a tough weekend for the YRHS Lady Raider volleyball team as they struggled to find any kind of footing early on in Balgonie, finishing in fifth place out of eight teams.
The Lady Raiders opened up round-robin play against the host Griffins, losing in straight sets 16-25, 14-25.
They then took on a tough Miller Marauder side, dropping the opening set 14-25. A strong performance in the second set saw the Lady Raiders nearly pull off the win, but untimely mistakes resulted in a very narrow 24-26 second set loss.
The bad luck would continue into their third and final round-robin game against the Winston Knoll Wolverines as Yorkton dropped the opening set 15-25 before finally finding their offensive game for their only round-robin set win 25-21. Unfortunately the second set win was not enough for the Raiders to finish higher than fourth place in their pool, meaning they had to take on Weyburn, who finished atop Pool B after round-robin.
A valiant effort proved to be not enough in the quarterfinal game as the Raiders simply could not combat the stronger Weyburn team resulting in a 16-25, 21-25 straight sets defeat.
The loss sent the Lady Raiders to the consolation side where they first took on Montmartre. The Lady Raiders came out strong and used some strong serving as well as impressive hitting at the net to take a 25-12 win in the first set. A back-and-forth second set saw the orange-clad ladies fall 22-25, however they rebounded in the third and final set to win 25-15.
The win meant that the Lady Raiders were moving on to the consolation final where they were to meet the Winston Knoll Wolverines.
This time the Lady Raiders were the ones prepared, dropping the Wolverines 25-15 in the first set. A 12-25 second set defeat sent the game to a third and deciding set where the Lady Raiders used all their previous knowledge from playing Winston Knoll to come out on top 25-20 to finish in fifth place out of the eight teams.
Following the tournament Lady Raider head coach Rae-Lynn Somogyi told Yorkton This Week that her team didn鈥檛 have that strong of a tournament and need to rebound next weekend should they want to carry any sort of momentum into Regionals. 鈥淭he girls had a tough weekend against some strong competition. We had to learn from our mistakes, tidy up a few areas of our game, and bring our best effort going into Swift Current next weekend,鈥� offered Somogyi. 鈥淭he Swift Current tournament is full of 5A teams, so we need to win some games there and gain some confidence going into Regionals in two weeks.鈥�
