A troika of SDSSAA medal hopefuls attended a pair of provincial boys volleyball championships this week following NOSSA action last weekend.
Leading the way are the city champion MacDonald-Cartier Panthères, making their first ever OFSAA appearance in boys volleyball under long-time coach Marc Savage. Cruising through round robin play, the crew that features just four returning seniors survived a slight scare in the NOSSA "A" final in earning their trip to Chatham and the OFSAA playdowns.
“The kids were pretty relaxed throughout NOSSA,” said Savage, a man who has guided teams at ESMC for some 25 years or so and now has a boys OFSAA trip to go along with the one the 2011 girls provided to the school. “In the finals, I thought they got nervous a bit.”
“We were expected to win and Elliot Lake played a lot better than when we played them in round robin.”
Blessed with some nice height and no less than six athletes who are also members of the Northern Chill Volleyball Club, Savage identified quickly those parts of the game that would require his attention – as well as that of the kids.
“Offensively, we have a lot of depth – and our passing is pretty good,” he said. “Defensively, I thought we had a lot of areas to improve on. We put the emphasis on blocking, a lot, especially in the past few weeks, and communication as well. We need to be a little quicker defensively in reacting to the ball.”
The Panthères roster for 2024 was as follows: Aziz Aissa, Riley Payzant, Jeremy Rheaume, Beckett Smith, Dax Winch, Hayden Quevillon, Justin Lafontaine, Spencer Rousseau, Olivier Tremblay, Connor Blackbrun, Dax Lamoureux and Max Gilroy.
A NOSSA “AA/AAA” senior boys volleyball final that would see the Horizon Aigles topple the Lo-Ellen Park Knights in four sets, 25-23, 24-26, 25-19, 25-23 would mean that both local schools will be St Catharines, the locals separated by just two spots in the tournament rankings (Horizon at #11 – Lo-Ellen at #13).
Horizon Aigles: André Blais, Nicolas Dalcourt, Addison Dénommé, Wesley Gibson, Nolan Jameus, Nicolas Leduc, Bailey Lemelin, Hunter Lévesque, Ryan Noel, Alexandre Osinski, Jérémie Prévost, Ryan Rinaldi, Greyson Seifert and Logan Trottier.
Lo-Ellen Park Knights: Ethan Burton, Will Church, Dane Gibeault, Riley Graffi, Matti Jouppi, Corey Lacroix, Fin Land, Micah Oommen, Anderson Parent, Caleb Pearson, Jordan Schweyer and Kalev Timusk.
The Lo-Ellen Park Knights also claimed the NOSSA Junior “AA/AAA” Boys Volleyball banner, with the tournament also hosted in North Bay last weekend.
A deep lineup included all of the following grade nine and ten student athletes at LEP: Andrew Miller-Larocque, Jacob Roy, Jack O'Connell, Gilles Guignard, Duncan Millun, Felix Naghi, Miguel Acuna-Munita, Max Jouppi, Nick Alexander, Naryan Shukla, Jack Mahaffy, Ryan Corrigan, Paolo Rocca, Kai Kumar, Greg Kao, head coach Dane MacVeigh and assistant coach Ryan Deresti.
