Colts miss playoffs at home tournament
The Swift Current Comp. Colts senior boys volleyball team finished short of a playoff appearance at their home tournament over the weekend.
The Colts finished the 13team with three match wins and three losses to miss the semi-finals on their home court.
“It was a learning weekend for us,” said head coach Dan Andrie. “We needed to apply some things that we were doing in practice and I thought yesterday we didn’t do that very well. Today, we came in with a better mindset, especially that last set, about the defensive things we wanted to do and also made smarter plays to stop making errors all the time.”
The Colts opened the weekend with a win over North Battleford (25-17, 25-10) in front of the student body at O.M. Irwin School on Friday afternoon. They quickly added a win over Oxbow (25-16, 2517) in front of Comp. students.
The Colts hit their first sign of adversity when they lost in straight sets to the Saskatoon Centennial Chargers (20-25, 13-25) and then lost in three sets to Balgonie Greenall (2522, 21-25, 13-15).
Saturday, the Colts fell in three sets to Estevan (26-24, 26-28, 12-15) before concluding the weekend with a win over the Prince Albert Carlton Crusaders (25-14, 25-12).
Meadow Lake defeated the defending champion Balgonie Greenall Griffins in three sets to win the tournament for the first time.
The Colts opened the season with a tournament title in Meadow Lake and then placed third in Medicine Hat prior to their home tournament.
“I’ve always said it’s good to take a loss early and it’s good to learn from those mistakes,” said Andrie. “The question now is are we going to learn from those mistakes moving forward? And if we do I think it will be something we’ll look back on and be like ‘it was okay that we got beat up this weekend,’ because hopefully we will learn from it and hopefully down the road it will benefit us.”
The Colts are led this season by returning starters Henry Rempel and Brett Theise.
“Henry and Brett are two great players. Parker Bloom has come back this year and he is another one who has improved a lot and been very strong. A couple other guys like Clay Thierman, who was a bench guy last year, he’s stepping up too. It’s a testament to our junior program and the club program that guys that weren’t on this team last year just step right in and like they were. I think the depth we have in our program allows other guys like Mattaus Janzen, Zach Glydon, and Shaye Wall and all those guys to come in and slide into our system pretty easily.”
The Colts are dealing with the additional pressure that comes with being the defending 5A provincial champions.
“I think there is pressure, especially for those that were in the line-up last year. Now they are coming back and they know that feeling of winning a championship and they want to do it again. I think that’s part of the reason why we are struggling a bit in the last couple weekends against those really strong teams. I think they think they need to win all the time, which puts a lot of pressure on themselves. My job as a coach is to help them understand that losses happen for a reason and if we learn from them and if we work hard in practice then good things will happen down the road,” said Andrie.
The Colts are off this weekend before heading to Prince Albert for a tournament next weekend.
“There’s a lot of work left to do. We need to refocus in practice. We need to commit to some changes that we are going to try and make as a team. I think if we do that then we’ll be fine heading into the last weekend, which is the big one at Provincials,” concluded Andrie.