The junior boys volleyball teams at St. Augustine Catholic School played a strong tournament during Wolf Creek volleyball playoffs last week.
The games were held Monday, Nov. 3 and Wednesday, Nov. 5 with strong performances from many of the teams. St. Augustine had two junior boys teams compete, with Luc Gratton’s team placing second.
Gratton said the playoffs wrapped up the season for teams in the league. Interest in volleyball was big enough that organizers put two teams together with Gratton heading one team and Brad Normandeau coaching the other.
“Instead of just developing 12 kids, we’re developing 24 kids,” said Gratton.
Both teams are getting as much play time as possible.
“We learned a lot by playing a lot of games,” explained Gratton of his team’s overall performance.
He said they played one, sometimes two games per week during the season and were able to gain some key experience. It also showed during one of their playoff games. Players were not only making passes, they were also attacking the ball at the right times.
Normandeau’s team did not fare as well as Gratton’s. If his team had won their playoff match, they would have competed against Gratton in the semi-finals. Normandeau felt his team’s biggest challenge was not getting enough strength in attacks against the other team.
He says many of his players are new to the game and despite the playoffs loss, he feels they have shown great improvement. With all the players working their way up in volleyball, Normandeau feels there will be a larger pool of players for next year.
“The next phase of that is having a lot of kids coming up from junior high and feeding into the senior high system,” said Normandeau.
“We have a fairly good spread of 7s, 8s and 9s on both teams,” he added.