Airdrie's various senior high-school volleyball teams ended their respective 2022 seasons at the 3A and 4A zones tournaments over the Nov. 18 and 19 weekend, with many teams' players bringing home some new hardware around their necks.
The Bert Church Chargers senior girls' team defied the odds to earn third place in the 4A tournament, which was hosted by Okotoks-based Holy Trinity Academy (HTA) Knights. The Chargers beat the Chestermere Lakers in four sets in the bronze-medal match.
“We came into the tournament not knowing what to expect, as we were playing some really tough teams” said head coach Rebecca Nguyen. “We ended up finishing third. It was a really good tournament for our team.”
According to Nguyen, the Chargers tied for fourth in their pool with the Foothills Composite Falcons, which meant they had to take part in a play-in game to qualify for the semi-finals. They won that game, which pitted Bert Church in a match-up with the host HTA Knights in the final four.
“It was a really close match, but we lost, so we ended up playing Chestermere for bronze,” Nguyen said. “We beat them in four sets.”
The first-year Bert Church coach said the bronze-medal match marked the second time the Chargers had faced Chestermere this season. The east Airdrie team lost to the Lakers during the regular season.
“We lost in four in the league, and then at zones, we won in four,” Nguyen said. “I think playing Chestermere near the end, they were also a very strong team that improved a lot by the end of the season. They played really well at zones as well, and [they] beat HTA and took Croxford to three sets in pool play. I would say they were probably the most improved team in the league [this year].”
Finishing on the podium at zones was proof that Bert Church peaked at the right time this year, according to Nguyen. While the team struggled to produce wins in the early weeks of the 2022 season, the Chargers players gelled as a group when it ultimately mattered most.
“I think it’s because our team was young,” she said. “We worked really hard in practices and finally got to where we needed to be. We definitely improved a lot throughout the season. A lot of other teams were calling us the underdogs – they weren’t expecting us to take the bronze medal.”
As for Airdrie's other 4A senior girls' representative, the W.H. Croxford Cavaliers replicated their 2021 finish, in which they came second at the zones tournament. This year, they once again claimed the silver medal by losing to HTA in the tournament final. As a result, Croxford just missed out on a berth at this past weekend's 4A provincials.
Meanwhile, the senior boys' Cavaliers team finished third at the 4A zones tournament on Nov. 19, while the Bert Church Chargers came in second. Like the Cavaliers senior girls, the Chargers boys lost to the HTA Knights in the gold-medal match.
At the 3A level, the George McDougall Mustangs senior girls' and boys' teams both finished with the bronze at the South Central Zones tournament.
