Both the YRHS Lady Raiders and Sacred Heart Lady Saints put together strong performances at the Sacred Heart Senior Ladies volleyball tournament this past weekend at the Halo Dome.
Raiders
The Raiders picked up straight sets victories over Foam Lake (28-26, 25-19), Sacred Heart (25-21, 25-22) and Rocanville (W/O, 25-0, 25-0) and split with Estevan (25-21, 13-25) and Wynyard (26-24, 18-25) while losing in straight sets to Esterhazy (22-25, 14-25) to finish the round-robin portion of the tournament in third place.
They then knocked off the Saints 25-14, 24-26, 15-11, in the first round of the playoffs before ending Estevan home in another three set match, taking the first set 25-19 and dropping the second set 16-25 before finally advancing to the final with a 15-9 third set win.
The tournament final saw the Raiders play Esterhazy with Esterhazy taking the first set 20-25. A second set win for the Lady Raiders 25-22 meant the final needed three sets to determine a winner, but unfortunately for the orange-clad ladies it was not they that would be named victors, falling 12-15 in the third set to settle for silver.
鈥淚 cannot say enough about this great group of girls we have,鈥� said YRHS Lady Raider head coach Rae-Lynn Somogyi following the tournament. 鈥淲e were off for two weeks without playing, so I was unsure of how we would perform, but we improved every match we played as the weekend went on.鈥�
Saints
The Saints meanwhile used a combination of youth and experience to finish sixth after the round-robin, sweeping Rocanville in straight sets 25-18, 25-20, and splitting with Esterhazy 25-22, 20-25. The Saints lost straight sets games to the YRHS (21-25, 22-25), Foam Lake (17-25, 20-25), Estevan (18-25, 22-25) and Wynyard (18-25, 12-25) despite playing some skilled volleyball.
That sixth place finish set the Saints up with a quarterfinal matchup against the Regional Raiders which the Saints lost in three sets, dropping the first set 14-25, before rebounding with a 26-24 second set win. A third set saw the Saints finally succumb to their Gladstone Avenue rivals, losing 11-15 to end their home tournament. 鈥淚 was very happy with the play of all of our team,鈥� said Perry Enns, head coach of the SHHS Lady Saints. 鈥淭he seniors did really well. They鈥檙e great leaders and they have a lot of skill and did a great job and our grade 11 and grade 10 girls did really well too.
鈥淎 lot of the teams that we played had no grade 10鈥檚 on the court and at times we had two or three grade 10 girls out there, so it was really good from a developmental standpoint for us as well.鈥�
