The Falcons took a 3-2 (25-17, 28-26, 24-26, 20-25, 15-12) win over the Vanier Vikings in a battle of the unbeatens on Tuesday night at Cornerstone, with the two teams taking to the court in a match that more than lived up to expectations.
“There was just a little dip there in the middle, that’s kind of been our nemesis, allowing other teams to have a bit of a run,” said Cornerstone coach Cam Lewis. “But it’s still early in the season, and I’m really excited about what we have going on here. It’s a great league this year and lots of real tough games, which helps us all improve. It’s fun being in games like this and makes it interesting.”
In the early going, it looked as if it was going to be a short night. After winning the first two sets, the Falcons took a substantial lead in what could have been the deciding game -- but true to form, the Vikings didn’t go down easy.
“Our boys just seem to love to be behind,” joked Vanier coach Levi Broda. “Against Central the other night they came back and they just seem to do things the hard way. But they never quit and every time I challenge them, they accept the challenge.
“It would have been easy to give in in the third set and put the whole bench in, but nope, they battled back and it was super awesome not to go home early tonight.”
Just looking at the scores, it would seem Vanier had all the momentum heading into the deciding set. But Cornerstone had battled back from a 25-11 deficit to make things close, and would carry that momentum over into the fifth. The Falcons would lead by as many as six points before finally finishing things off.
“The thing we’re focussing on is terminating plays, and I thought we did that well especially when it mattered,” Lewis said. “We had a bit of a letdown in our passing and defensive game there, which is just the mental toughness… we felt we were cruising pretty good and maybe thought we were better than we were, especially in that fourth game when we didn’t play well at all.”
Given their start, Lewis would have liked to have seen an early finish, but gave credit where credit was due.
“They’re a well-coached team,” he said. “They do the right things right and we made some mistakes and can’t do that against a team like that.”
Vanier fell to 3-1 with the loss but left Broda once again impressed with his troops.
“We did some things against a really good team that I didn’t think we were capable of, and there were also some really good reminders that we have to work at practice to shore up our serve receive and defence,” he said.
“We’re a young team, and all of this is brand new for them. We aren’t carrying over our momentum from our past success, it’s a fresh start and we have to re-learn a lot of lessons. Games like this are going to help accelerate that. So we’ll just keep moving forward.”
The Falcons are now 4-0, but are under no illusion that things will be easy going forward -- not with four teams in the league going to war night in and night out this season.
“It’s a fun season, it makes it great for fans and I think people from Moose Jaw would be entertained and should come out,” Lewis said. “There’s some pretty solid volleyball being played in Moose Jaw right now and every time these teams face each other it’s going to be a good game.”
The league game between Central and Briercrest was postponed; no score was reported between Peacock and Riverview.
In the lone girls league game on Tuesday night, the Peacock Toilers (3-0) continued their dominating run, taking a 3-0 (25-12, 25-11, 25-13) victory over the Vanier Spirits (0-3).
