Legends earn second straight provincial title
The Fox Valley Legends won a second straight girls volleyball provincial championship in Langham Saturday.
One year after the Legends won the first girls’ volleyball provincial championship in school history at the 1A level, the Legends moved up to 2A and won all seven matches, dropping their first set, before stringing together 14 straight wins to claim their third straight provincial medal after winning silver in 2012 and gold in 2013.
The Legends were led by coach Johnathon Schneider, who is in his fourth year of coaching volleyball in Fox Valley and in his third season with the Senior Girls.
“It was pretty surreal,” said Schneider. “I didn’t expect it at all this year actually. We just had a different team and a different group of kids to work with.”
The Legends graduated only two players from last year’s championship team, but Schneider said it took a lot of team building to get back to the top of the province this season.
“The season was relatively rough,” said Schneider.
The Legends won their first tournament of the season in Cabri. “After that it was pretty much a downward slide,” he said.
“We kind of hit rock bottom and we had to reevaluate what our goals were. We set new goals and we started toward, more or less, our goals for this team for this season and what our expectations were for the end.”
He said the team’s original goal was simply to qualify for Provincials.
The Legends opened the tournament on Friday afternoon with a three-set win over Edam. They lost the opening set 23-25 before responding with 2516 and 25-18 wins.
They met the host Langham team later that afternoon and earned a straight set win (25-21, 26-24).
They moved to 3-0 with a win over Strasbourg (2520, 25-18) and then clinched top spot in the round robin with a win over Meath Park (25-21, 2514).
“In round robin play we kind of struggled. We didn’t play our best but we worked hard and we pulled it off to go undefeated in the round robin,” explained Schneider.
The Legends disposed of Wilkie in the quarterfinal (25-20, 25-12) and then took care of Montmarte (25-14, 25-10) in the semi-final.
“The semi-final was kind of tough,” admitted Schneider. “We had a real rough passing game.”
They met Hepburn in the final and defeated them 25-17 and 28-26 to win gold. “In the final we probably played the best game of the season. That was the best they have played,” said Schneider.
“It was loud in your face volleyball. Every point was huge, no matter if we scored it or Hepburn scored, it was loud and everybody knew who scored,” he said of the championship match.
The Legends were comprised of four grade 12’s, two grade 11’s, and four grade 10’s. They added two grade nines for Provincials.
“We had a good core group of grade 12’s. The leadership ability of the grade 12’s was unmatched,” said Schneider.
He said their provincial championship experience was crucial.
“It helped big time. They weren’t nervous. They kind of expected Hepburn to come out hard and we expected the fans to be loud and it didn’t faze them this year.”
They have six players eligible to return next season when they attempt to defend their 2A title.
“Yeah next year will be a very young team. We are looking for just basics and to rebuild and see if we can try and contend for a repeat.”