The next few weeks will see the Ashbridges Bay beach volleyball courts in Toronto buzzing with activity, site of the OVA (Ontario Volleyball Association) Beach Volleyball Championships, with the Sudbury tandem of Josslyne Ouellette and Harlym Triff setting the tone for the remainder of the Northern Chill contingent to follow.

One week after hitting the podium at the same venue in their first weekend together as a team, the 16U girls duplicated the feat at provincials, capturing bronze medals in the Division II Tier I bracket, showing well in a field that featured four separate Divisions of play, each with four separate Tiers.

That’s a whole lot of success in what amounted to their first two weeks as partners.

“I think it’s because of the fact that I know her so well,” said Ouellette, who played alongside Triff with the Chill 16U Black Cyclones last winter. “We just trust each other and our plays.”

With neither of their standard beach partners available for the weekend of provincials, the two were merged together just weeks before the big event, putting a particular emphasis on how exactly the team would develop chemistry with a very short runway ahead.

“That was why we wanted to do a tournament before provincials, just so we had a chance to actually play together, talk strategy, stuff like that,” said Ouellette. “We went into that first tournament with no expectations. Everything was trial and error last weekend – but our positioning on the court was good.”

In fact, that was also one of the biggest takeaways as this linking of an indoor middle (Ouellette) with a right-side attacked (Triff) looked to figure things out in a hurry. “At the beginning, we thought that staggered positioning would work – but we found that it was really hard for the person in front when someone tipped on the other side of the net,” said Ouellette.

“We figured out a better solution, which I think really helped.”