You must dig deep and block out all distractions to win a championship.
The Holy Trinity Academy Knights are heading back to the 4A Senior boys provincial volleyball championships after narrowly edging the Foothills Falcons 3-2 (25-21, 23-25, 22-25, 25-18, 15-13) in the South Central zone final Nov. 16 at the Comp.
The Knights found themselves down 5-2 early in the final set.
“Obviously, the morale was down,” said Knights libero and co-captain Blake Jeanson. “But we pulled together as a group and we kept our energy up and made key plays when we needed to.
“We pulled through that hard time.”
They got a big boost when Knights co-captain Calvin Herr went down low and dug up Foothills Falcon power Nolan Edwards’ missile of a spike.
HTA returned the ball and the Falcons would lose the point to give HTA a 13-10 lead in the final set.
“I saw we only had our outside blocker going up, so I moved back and kind of let the ball hit me,” Herr said. “Luckily, it just popped over to their side. They tried to pick it up and they just didn’t get it.”
The Falcons didn’t roll over. Foothills was able to close the gap to 13-14 on another spike by Edwards – and were serving to tie at 14-14.
However, like that classic 60’s hit, they got stuck in the middle.
The Falcons had set up a smash to tie the gap, but the Knights lean-tall middle Tobias Krueger stood steadfast and blocked the attempt.
Foothills was unable to return the block and HTA won the zone banner.
The Knights turnaround was helped by the big hitting of power Kyle Doornbosch in the final set.
“I had plenty of room to swing and attack,” Doornbosch said.
Although missing out on provincials by just two points, Falcons coach Ryan Hogan, said his squad had come a long ways in the short 2 ½ month season.
“The improvement we have seen over the year has been unbelievable,” Hogan said. “We had a tough go, we had some players miss some time because of significant injuries, I am really proud of them. They all took great steps, but hats off to HTA.
“That’s the best I have seen them play all season.”
He said the young team will learn from their tough loss at zones.
“To lose 15-13 in the fifth, well that’s really anybody’s ballgame,” Hogan said. “If anything cost us, it was just our communication and some tough times when some balls dropped because we weren’t talking.
“That’s our takeaway.”
He said the team was also hurt by Foothills missing five serves in the final set.
The Knights got the bye to the finals by going 2-0 in the three-team round-robin. They downed the Falcons and the Chestermere Lakers.
The Falcons beat Chestermere in the round-robin and then ousted the Lakers in the semifinal Saturday morning.
Now the Knights are heading for provincials in Edmonton this weekend.
“It’s a great feeling to go to provincials two years in a row,” Jeanson said. “It just shows the hard work from the beginning of the season. The players who needed to step up really stepped up.
“It was super-fun to see everyone working hard and having fun doing it.”
The Holy Trinity Academy Knights are Calvin Herr, Tobias Krueger, Ryan Wright, Miguel Yu, Kalen Saunders, Max Hartman, Yvan Janaban, Blake Jeanson, Kyle Doornbosch and Mark Luis Balayut. The coach is Stephanie Krueger.
The Foothills Falcons are Tate Marshall, Colton Mueller, Nolan Edwards, Eli Cramer, Fraser Forchuk, Aden Allin, Dalton Sharkey, Sam Matsubara, Carter Bailey, Connor Makuras and coach Ryan Hogan.
