A quick glance at the recent late November offering of OFSAA championships will show that, more often than not, the girls basketball contingent have held the upper hand on the boys volleyball crew when it comes to SDSSAA participation in the all-Ontario playdowns.
Perhaps the tides are turning.
Sure, the fact that the 2022 OFSAA Boys A Volleyball Championships are being hosted locally certainly helps – play starts Thursday morning with game at Cambrian College, Collège Boréal and Macdonald-Cartier – the simple truth is that the local quartet of the Lasalle Lancers, Horizon Aigles, Lo-Ellen Park Knights and Lockerby Vikings are all fully deserving of a berth within the top-20 of their respective brackets on a provincial scale.
Bronze medal winners at AAA OFSAA last year at this time, coach Dale Beausoleil returns a team (Lasalle) that is heading to Huntsville seeded first, but fully aware that the event will be markedly different from their experience last November in Kingston.
“Because of Covid, there were only eight to ten teams last year; this year, we have the full twenty,” noted grade 11 right-side hitter Oak Runia. “There were a lot of fantastic teams that were not able to go to OFSAA last year. I hope we come across them this year – and hopefully beat them.”
A lifelong fan of basketball over volleyball – until last year – Runia and the remaining Lancer ball smashers have managed to utilize their fall schedule effectively, gradually building a bond with setter James Welsh, the grade 11 returnee who served as back-up one year ago.
“I’ve focused on adjusting to my teammates: how do I benefit my hitters the most? how can they best hit the ball?,” he said. “And I’ve played libero at times with the club (Northern Chill). I think that’s helped me as a setter a lot, especially defensively.”
Lasalle find themselves in the same pool as E.L. Crossley SS (Fonthill – Niagara), Kingsville DHS (Essex County), Streetsville DHS
and
Staying in northern Ontario, the Horizon Aigles are thrilled to be playing host to the OFSAA A tournament for the very first time, a wonderful acknowledgement of the work that head coach Patrick Gervais and others at the school have done to create a volleyball culture at the Val Caron institution.
While the team suffered a tough loss in the SDSSAA semi-finals, beaten by a Lasalle squad that they had vanquished in regular season play, the Aigles rebounded to capture the NOSSA A banner with relative ease, a pretty big deal for veteran Kyle Perreault and company.
“I think that after the semi-final game, most of us were pretty down,” said the 17 year old left-side senior. “Most of us are grade 12 and are leaving next year, so not winning the cities was pretty disappointing. But we still wanted to win NOSSA to prove that we are going to OFSAA not just because we are hosting.”
With not a single player on the roster having experienced OFSAA volleyball before, the Horizon lads are trying hard not to over-think where exactly they might deserve to fall in the overall pecking order after being seeded 12th among the total event entries.
“I’m not sure what to expect,” admitted setter Simon Lemieux, just one of the many who are among the graduating grade 12 class that Perreault alluded to. “We’re a little confused about just how good the teams might be. The NOSSA competition was pretty easy and this is still single A – and in Sudbury, we play a lot of AA teams.”
“We’ll see what other A teams are like.”
Teenagers being teenagers, it’s not always easy to convince them that seedings actually mean relatively little, especially coming off the two-year cycle that was 2020/2021, a time which provided almost no insight to any potentially budding powerhouses in the Ontario boys volleyball circuit.
“I just think that, especially at OFSAA, every game is as important as the next one,” said Lemieux. “It doesn’t matter if you’re playing the first place team or the last place team, you still have to win.”
Horizon has drawn pool mates Quinte CHS (Belleville), Chatham CS, Woodstock CI and St Paul SS (Mississauga) while the Lockerby Vikings (#14) will face ESC Mère-Teresa (Hamilton), Rockway Mennonite Collegiate (Kitchener), Mackenzie CS (Deep River) and Smithville CHS.
While the number of local qualifiers might be halved for girls basketball, the quality is still there as the Lo-Ellen Park Knights travel to Stratford as the 4th seed in an 18-team draw, taking to the court for the opening game on Thursday afternoon at 12:15 p.m. versus ESC Béatrice-Desloges.
Rounding out the SDSSAA group of six are the Horizon Aigles basketball girls, making their way to Walkerton, home of Laurentian Voyageurs women’s head coach Jason Hurley and site of the OFSAA A Girls Basketball Championships.
It’s not a trip that was necessarily anticipated, at least not in the eyes of 16 year-old sharp-shooter Kennedy Bellefeuille, clearly the offensive catalyst for the Aigles this fall. “At the beginning (of the year), there were a lot of our girls that didn’t have a lot of high-school experience, just because of Covid,” she said.
“I didn’t think that we could make it this far. But as we were developing with tournaments and games, we turned out really good.”
They did indeed, knocking off the West Ferris Trojans 48-40 in North Bay last Saturday as Bellefeuille (17) and Breanna Lemaire (18) provided the one-two punch needed to claim the NOSSA banner.
“Everything just clicked,” said Bellefeuille. “We just know where we’re supposed to be. We know where to get the ball if we’re in trouble. Every single person on the team has their own position that they are really good at.”
The Aigles also tip off their OFSAA experience on Thursday, doing battle with Osgood Township High School from Ottawa.
