Birch Hills won their second straight provincial title on the weekend. (Submitted Photo/Shannon Vey)

By Mat Barrett

Boys Provincial Volleyball

Back-to-back for Birch Hills, silver for Annaheim at boys volleyball provincials

Nov 26, 2019 | 10:58 AM

A handful of hardware is coming back to northeast Saskatchewan after boys provincial volleyball championships on the weekend.

From Nov. 22 to 23, teams from all over competed for gold in their respective categories.

In 3A, Birch Hills took home the gold medal for the second straight year. 2018 was the first year boys volleyball had won gold, so Head Coach Shannon Vey said that was something special, but this championship still means a lot.

“Back-to-back sure is nice to prove how good we are, how good our team is,” he told northeastNOW. “Any kind of gold medal in any sport is good for your school.”

Birch Hills went undefeated on the weekend in Tisdale. They knocked off the hosts in the quarter-finals in straight sets before a three set win over Unity to punch their ticket to the gold medal game. The championship was a rematch of last lear as Birch Hills took on Kipling, and the result was a three set win for Birch Hills. Vey gave plenty of credit to Kipling’s team, saying they were really good.

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Vey said he probably had the best setter in the province, combined with some very athletic players, leading to a very succesful couple of years.

“It’s a perfect storm for the last two years,” Vey said. “Last year we won with no grade twelves, and then of course this year now we have our grade twelves, so we had back-to-back same teams, so that really helped us out a lot.”

Vey hopes seeing the success over the last few years gets more kids in the area wanting to play volleyball. He said he’s already seeing it in the girls game.

Elsewhere, a silver medal is coming back to Annaheim after they lost in the final of the 1A tournament to Rouleau.

Volleyball has been very succesful for Annaheim over the years, winning numerous provincial medals, but Head Coach Blair Wourms said even though they didn’t reach their ultimate goal, he’s still proud of his team.

“Obviously gold was the goal,” he said. “But I told them that when they wake up in the morning, they’ll realize that silver is a pretty incredible feat as well.”

(Submitted Photo/Blair Wourms)

Annaheim had a perfect 4-0 record through the round robin, and had a matchup with Glaslyn in the quarter-finals, a match they won in straight sets. That was followed by another straight set win in the semi-finals over Frontier, setting up a meeting with Rouleau in the finals, a match that ended in three sets.

Wourms said for the whole weekend their goal was to play for the person next to them.

“They went in, they worked as a team, they never let down,” Wourms said. “They kind of avoided the really low lows and the high highs, they just kind of stayed even and worked their way, chipped around, and they were rewarded for their hard work.”

He added they’ll look at their numbers for next year, losing a handful of players to graduation.

Also in 1A, Muenster was able to win bronze, beating Frontier in the third place match.

In 4A, Humboldt took home bronze as well, beating Sturgis in the third place matchup.

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mat.barrett@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @matbarrett6