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Grade 9 Lakers improving by leaps and bounds

École H. J. Cody Lakers Grade 9 girls’ volleyball team competed in a tournament at Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School
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École H. J. Cody Lakers Grade 9 girls volleyball team competed at Lindsay Thurber on the weekend

BY KIM MATTHEWS

École H. J. Cody Lakers Grade 9 girls’ volleyball team competed in a tournament at Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School on the weekend, knocking out the host team before placing fourth in playoffs.

The tournament featured 10 teams — Hunting Hills, Leduc, Lacombe, Red Deer Lake, St. Edmund, St. Francis, Ponoka, H. J. Cody and the two host teams, Lindsay Thurber A & B.

Friday started with the Lakers beating Lindsay Thurber B team in two sets straight.

Next came the ever challenging St. Francis team and we lost both sets to them but the girls played and amazing game with both sets tight games.

Saturday the girls started out with a loss to Hunting Hills, but had a huge come back against Leduc. We each took one set and it came to points to see who moved on to playoffs. We took the points by eight and moved forward. The girls were very pumped at this point, but had a long four hour gap between games.

Playoffs started at 3 p.m. with the Lakers playing Lindsay Thurber A who we lost to in the previous tournament. This A team is very talented and we never seem to be able to beat this team. The girls went onto the court and right away were up and totally excited. You could see the boost of confidence it had given them. They continued to stay up by at least five points, but both teams kept scoring and going back and forth. Parents were standing and you could see the look of excitement and tension in their faces as well. We won that set and then lost the second set.

It came down to a third set to break the tie. The third game only goes to 15 points and our girls won 15-13 … the whole team was so pumped as they had just beaten the host team and knocked them out of the tournament. The parents were just as excited when the game finished as the whole team put forward 100 per cent effort and looked amazing. By far this was the best game of the tournament.

Moving forward in the playoffs, brought us up against St. Francis, who we had lost to earlier in round robin. This game was three minutes after the game we had just played against Lindsay Thurber, starting at 4 p.m. We lost this game in two sets but again put in a stellar performance. This moved us to the bronze medal game starting at 5 p.m. which we lost coming in fourth place over all.

The girls had an incredible tournament and parents noted that this was by far the best tournament so far and the girls are improving by leaps and bounds. MVP for the tournament was Alex Cadman voted by Coach Eric for her effort. Great job Alex.

In league play the girls are now 2-1 for the season. At time of publication we will have played a grudge match against Lindsay Thurber A team on the 8th, and a game against St. Francis on the 9th. The next few games after publication will be the 16th in Innisfail and then another tournament on the 18th and 19th hosted by Hunting Hills in Red Deer. Then another league game at H. J. Cody on Oct 22nd against Lindsay Thurber B team. Keep up all the hard work ladies, your team play is looking great!