Toilers down Falcons in girls volleyball
The Peacock Toilers might have come out of their Moose Jaw high school girls volleyball contest against the Cornerstone Christian School Falcons with a straight-sets victory, but that’s not to say it was overly easy.
Not after a 25-22 battle in the first game and a handful of near comebacks for the Falcons in the Toilers 25-11 and 25-14 wins as they took a 3-0 victory at Peacock. In the end, though, it was the Toilers serve game that made the difference. Any time Cornerstone got close, a seven- or eight-point Peacock service run would follow and put the game out of reach.
That would just be how it goes if it hadn’t been such a bug-a-boo for Cornerstone all season.
“We were playing on the weekend we lost the gold medal game playing the Southwest Lightning. We were up 23-16 and we lost... it was just one girl on a serving run,” explained coach Lee Behrns. “So, we said today we have to limit those service runs, and we tried, but there were girls who would go on a seven-point run and then everyone tenses up a bit and it just snowballs.” It certainly didn’t hurt that the Toilers had a marked advantage in size and experience, especially in the front row where the Falcons were forced to start two Grade 9s with veteran middle Rachel Schultz out of the lineup.
“I thought they did pretty well for being up against a team like that,” Behrns said. “It’s good for them to see that, too. When we play 5A schools like this, it really helps us improve so when we play schools our own size we’re able to win, and we’ve been seeing that this year already.”
For the Toilers, it’s been a season of getting familiar with one another. That can mean the occasional slow or tough start but matches like that are becoming fewer and fewer as the year goes on.
“Our team is really starting to work together and stuff, at the beginning it was a little rough, we were heavy on our toes, but we started moving a lot better and were encouraging other,” Toilers veteran Abby Busch said of Thursday’s win. “We’re getting up there, we still have a lot of work to do but we’re playing well and getting better.”
In other girls league action, the Vanier Spirits took a 3-0 (25-22, 25-9, 25-10) win over the Central Cyclones. In the lone boys match on the night, Avonlea took a 3-0 win over Cornerstone Christian School.