For the second straight weekend volleyball tournament, they made the final game.
For the second straight weekend, they played on their hometown court.
And for the second straight weekend, they dominated, almost until the final match.
The Yorkton Regional High School (YRHS) senior volleyball team put on quite a show two weekends ago at Sacred Heart, winning 2-1 in a best-of-three match against Kincaid.
This past weekend, they managed to put forth another volleyball spectacle on the YRHS floor but went up against another powerful school in St. Mary's of Prince Albert.
Teams competing included YRHS, Sacred Heart, Estevan, Weyburn, PA St. Mary's, Vincent Massey (Brandon), Kelvington, Roblin, Swift Current, Fox Valley, PA Carlton and Oxbow.
It was the second straight weekend for the YRHS crew, having advanced to the final at Sacred Heart two weeks ago.
They had played an awful lot of volleyball in the City over the past two weekends.According to head coach Dion Pfeifer, the boys were "out of gas" come the final match against St. Mary's.
"This was a very high quality tournament," he said when it was all over and done.
He added that teams really had to fight to advance beyond the round robin matches.
YRHS player Brent Spilak acknowledged that the team has played an awful lot of volleyball both at their home tournament and at Sacred Heart's the previous weekend, including having played eight single games in a row that went to 25 points.
"We usually play a lot," he said after the Prince Albert squad beat his, 2-0. "At first we were kind of slow."
He added that YRHS plays well together because most of them have been playing competitive volleyball since Gr. 5-6.
Pfeifer said the group's experience has been showing lately and that it seems things can only improve from here, as was the case at home this past weekend.
"It was definitely our best weekend all year. We started playing some defence and the emotion today was where we needed it."
St. Mary's was the dominant team in the finals, having taken leads of 8-1, 13-2, 21-4 and 23-8 in the last game of the match.
"That's a good strong team," says Spilak. "They play all year round."
He added that his team was able to hit well and their experience playing together helped, but wasn't going to be enough to get past a strong Prince Albert team.
Pfeifer added that the possible exists of the two schools meeting each other at the provincials.The YRHS team played most of their games without any breaks in between, says Pfeifer, adding that it probably caught up with them once the finals started.
"We sat around for awhile," he said. (But) the guys are keeping their heads up."
