City champs fall in co-ed v-ball match

[attach]5783[/attach]Like some of their serves, Etobicoke School of the Arts’ co-ed volleyball came up short against Silverthorn Collegiate Institute during their match on April 19.

Despite having home court advantage, ESA’s Eagles were unable to dig out a win, falling to the Spartans in three sets (24-26, 25-20, 15-9).

Eagles’ assistant coach Alex Gurnham blamed his team’s unforced errors for their first defeat in three games this season.

“We were giving away a lot of points, missing a lot of serves and what it comes down to is consistency,” he said. “I think we’re a better defensive team than them and we gave away too many points on offence and that’s really the reason we took the loss.”

In the first sets both teams struggled to find their strides. More points seemed to come off of mistakes than well-placed shots, with several netted serves and ceiling balls occurring on either side.

However, the crowd support never wavered.

The sloppy play resulted in bodies flying and limbs flailing on a few occasions, which led to players pulling off some near-impossible saves, much to the crowd’s delight. After winning the first set 26-24 it appeared the Eagles would have the momentum to take the match.

The Spartans were unfazed by the noise though and started the second set on a 7-1 run. The home team answered their opponent with an 8-0 run of their own led by some steady serving and powerful spikes by Hendrik Jakobson.

“We played our game,” said the grade 10 player. “We definitely didn’t let anything hit the floor. We played tough all the time, we just have to play a better game next time.”

Down 17-14, ESA’s coaches tried to get their team to play better by taking a timeout. The players responded with a quick two points, but their opponents responded as well, scoring two points of their own just as quickly before eventually taking the set 25-20.

Silverthorn’s head coach Peter Stefaniuk said he was proud of the character his players showed in taking the game-tying set before going on to win.

“We did show a lot of character coming back,” Stefaniuk said. “It was a complete team effort.

“We served tough, we played good defence, our girls were hot. Our girls were blocking their male hitters so I thought that was really cool.”

Although the Eagles were tied with Silverthorn 6-6 to start the third set, the Spartans took over the rest of the way and led 14-7 at one point. After a desperate rally and some improbable saves to stay alive, the Spartans eventually won the final set, 15-9.

“They were a really consistent team,” Gurnham said. “They’re the type of team that can beat us because they don’t miss a lot of serves, they keep the ball on the court and they force you to beat them, so it’s the type of thing where they’re not going to make a lot of mistakes.”

Gurnham said his team will have to cut down on their own mistakes if they hope to repeat as city champions this year.

“I think that we’ve got a team that’s fully capable of making it back to the city championships,” he said. “We’re returning every player from that city championship team last year so I don’t see any reason why we can’t make it back there if we can clean up a few things in practice and develop a little bit more consistency as the season goes on.”