Hosting brought out the most of the Foothills Falcons.
The Falcons girls went toe-to-toe with some of the top teams in the province and made it to the quarter-final in the 32-team Falcons Classic senior boys and girls volleyball tournament held Oct. 29-30 in Okotoks.
“We were right in there where those top teams were and just couldn’t quite get that win out of the girls,” said Falcons girls head coach Joanne Schoneck. “We would have loved to get through that round of eight, for sure.”
In pool play, the Falcons took the top-seed Hunting Hills Lightning to three sets and took out both the Chestermere Lakers and LCI Rams to finish second in the group.
In the playoff round, Foothills got past Barrhead before coming up against a familiar foe in Calgary Christian in the quarterfinal round.
“We’ve played them before and taken them to three so we knew it was going to be a tough game,” Schoneck said. “It was just one of those games where Calgary Christian just had an amazing game and we just had one that wasn’t necessarily our best.
“I’m sure if we played them again we’d have a much closer match, but this one didn’t work out that way.”
It was a full-team effort from the Falcons over the weekend with every member of the squad making an impact at opportune times, the coach added.
“Each girl had the opportunity to be the person in each game and that person was different each time,” Schoneck said. “Sometimes it was a matter of having big serves at the right time or maybe it was a big hit or a great pass.
“Each of the girls had moments where they were the ones that we relied on.”
On the other side of the bracket, the Holy Trinity Academy Knights rallied to advance to the consolation final.
“I think getting back to playing and getting the basics back to where they should be after having a year and a half off, so we focused on the basics,” said Knights girls head coach Melanie Glanville. “And then when that well we had fun with the plays. I always kept telling them, if you don’t have a pass, you can’t have the big hit.
“Our success came from focusing on going to the basics and doing well with those, the serving and the passing.”
The Knights dropped their match with Raymond in the playoff round icebreaker before rebounding with a pair of victories over Bert Church and Chestermere to advance to the consolation final. Barrhead got the better of HTA to close out the tournament.
“It was a rollercoaster through pool play, but we need to understand that in sport and in life and know how to deal with that and then be okay with losing and then coming back,” Glanville said.
“Really good (playoff) games, everybody played well. And again I was stressing to my girls that you can’t expect to come into volleyball, or anything for that matter, and not have mistakes. So making those mistakes is okay and being able to comeback or not is okay. Volleyball is just a game, it’s not going to control our life.”
The Strathcona-Tweedsmuir Spartans dropped their playoff opener to Catholic Central and in the consolation bracket were edged out by Chestermere.
Magrath won the tournament, Lindsay Thurber earned silver and Calgary Christian took the bronze in the 32-team competition.
“Because of COVID we were originally going to have 20 teams in each and were going to run it with 40 teams,” Schoneck said. “When Calgary announced they weren’t allowed to play tournament play, a lot of our teams were Calgary teams so we had lost about 11 on each side. I basically did an all-call to teams because at that point a lot of teams are scrambling to find tournaments.
“So we had 16 and 16 this year which was still pretty big and a lot of different teams from normal, Barrhead came down, we saw Red Deer teams and Lethbridge teams and Magrath – only a 2A school out of the South… We saw a lot of teams we don’t normally see so we were certainly lucky to have that opportunity this year.
“A lot of those teams are hoping to come back because the quality of teams this year was quite high.”
In league play, the Falcons go into playoffs as the top-seed with a 7-0 record. The Comp opened the Foothills Athletic Council postseason on Nov. 1 by knocking off the eight-seed Holy Cross Collegiate.
The Knights, the No. 3 seed, got past Notre dame Collegiate.
The Spartans eliminated Highwood in the four-versus-five matchup.
The FAC girls semifinals are Nov. 3 at 5:30 p.m. with the Falcons hosting the Spartans and County Central hosting the Knights with a date in the Nov. 8 championship match on the line.
In the boys division of the Falcons Classic, the Holy Trinity Academy Knights advanced to the consolation final versus Cochrane after a strong showing in the playoff round.
The Knights finished fourth in Pool G with losses to Catholic Central, Camrose and Calgary Christian. HTA then rebounded with a loss to Chinook in playoffs to defeat the Foothills Falcons en route to advancing to the consolation final.
The Falcons showed well against a number of teams now familiar to them over the two-day competition.
“We saw a lot of good things and played a few teams that we played previously in the year,” said Falcons head coach Jeremy Davies. “Being kind of an inexperienced team, those initial matches at the start of the year were a bit of an eye-opener.
“But this weekend when we saw them for the second or third time, our compete level was a lot higher and our results were a lot better overall.
“I think the boys realized all the hard work they’re putting in practice and in games is starting to pay off.”
In pool play, the Falcons finished third in Pool E with a 1-2 record. Foothills was edged out by the LCI Rams and Hunting Hills Lightning before bouncing back to edge the Chestermere Lakers 25-18 and 27-25.
“They’re in our zone as well so that was a huge match for us,” Davies said. “We played a real good Hunting Hills team from Red Deer and they ended up winning the tournament, and so the boys saw what an elite level team looked like and learned through that match. I believe that’s why we were able to beat Chestermere because we played such high level teams already.”
In playoff action, the Comp lost to Barrhead and dropped into the B-bracket and into a matchup with the Knights – the fourth meeting of the season between the crosstown rivals — in the consolation quarterfinal.
“We lost to them, but had a lot of positives,” Davies said. “Hopefully we’ll see them later them on in league (playoffs) next week.”
The Strathcona-Tweedsmuir Spartans finished fourth in Pool F, with narrow defeats to Cochrane, Chinook and Strathmore. In the playoff round, the Spartans fell to Calgary Christian and LCI to drop out of contention.
Hunting Hills earned the gold, Chinook took silver and Magrath claimed the bronze.
The attention shifts back to league play this week with the FAC playoffs beginning on Nov. 2. The top-seed Knights will play the winner of the Oilfields and Notre Dame Collegiate match in the first semifinal on Nov. 4 at 5:30 p.m. while the other semi will see the Spartans and Falcons clash at STS at 6 p.m.
For full schedule information go to foothillsathletics.squadfusion.com.
