The Foothills Falcons tied their best finish at the boys volleyball provincials on Nov. 24, but left Lethbridge wanting more.
The ninth ranked Falcons finished 10th at the 4A Senior Boys High School Provincials, held Nov. 23-24 at Chinook High in Lethbridge, tying the highest standing in school history.
“I think we could have probably placed a little bit higher, but we struggled in games where we needed to perform better,” said Falcons head coach Corey Cowper. “We had a great start. The first day was really, really good.”
Foothills rode a wave of confidence through round-robin play in Pool C earning straight sets wins over Lloydminster Composite (25-19, 25-17) and Medicine Hat High (25-19, 25-14).
The course through the provincial tournament was made a more taxing when Foothills dropped its pool-play finale 2-0 (22-25, 24-26) to Calgary’s Bishop Carroll.
Falcons captain Ethan Carter, back on the court after missing two weeks with a high ankle sprain, said losing to the Carroll Cardinals marked a turning point at provincials.
“That sort of pushed us down and we couldn’t recover,” Carter said. “The back row couldn’t really handle anything that came at them. Blocking and back row were our big faults all weekend.”
The Falcons were matched with a ballhawking Bishop O’Leary team in the playoff qualifier. The Edmonton school won the best-of-five showdown 3-0 (25-14, 25-15, 25-15).
“They were just bringing up everything we threw at them,” Cowper said. “We had a hard time finding the floor on their side. Really, what we needed to do was side-out instead of allowing those three to four point runs.”
The Falcons bounced back to defeat Medicine Hat for the second time in two days (25-21, 25-20) and advanced to the ninth-place game versus the Grande Prairie Warriors.
Cowper opted to use his full roster of 13 players, including JV standouts Josh Cooper and Cole Selner, in the ninth-place contest. The Warriors would prove to be an improved group since their two earlier losses this season to Foothills and took the provincial tilt in two sets (25-19, 25-10).
“I played everybody through the last game because for a lot of guys it was going to be their last game,” Cowper said. “They weren’t going to sit in that one.”
Carter, part of an eight-member Grade 12 class to graduate from the volleyball program, said the provincial result wasn’t quite the high school swan song he hoped for.
“Tenth is our school record for provincials so that’s solid,” Carter said. “But I would have liked to come out a lot higher than that personally. We wanted to beat ninth so coming in 10th is kind of disappointing.”
The future remains bright for the Falcons despite just three returning players in Brett Carter, Austin Latta and Noah Wilkie, all in Grade 11.
“We were Grade 12 heavy, but I’m not worried about that with the kids that are coming up,” Cowper said. “We’re going to have another solid group with a good chunk of guys from our JV team that are going to keep it going.”
In the gold medal game, Harry Ainlay beat its city rivals Edmonton Christian in four sets to capture the provincial title.
