It was another tough game against an opponent was who most definitely up for the moment, but the Peacock Toilers once again managed to get the job done.
And this time, it was enough to land them their third-straight Moose Jaw High School Athletic Association girls volleyball city championship.
The Toilers rolled to 25-17 and 25-21 wins in the first two games of their match with the Central Cyclones before things tightened up significantly as things progressed. Central won the third game 25-15 and took a 10-1 lead early in the fourth before Peacock closed things out with a 26-24 win.
In other words, another close playoff match in a league that’s become well-known for such occurrences.
“It was a great battle, it was like the [semifinal] against Vanier and it’s like we said at the start of the year, it’s going to be tight the whole year, and it was,” Toilers coach Lorne Polupski said amid the post-game celebrations. “Central could have easily won that, it was great volleyball, it’s great for the city, I love this stuff.”
The championship was the third for senior Peacock setter Makena Simmons, who won as a Grade 9 in 2019 and again in Grade 11 last season, with the 2020 campaign cancelled due to the pandemic.
“It’s so cool,” Simmons said of the title runs. “From Grade 9 to Grade 12 is quite a journey, it’s been a lot of teams and a lot of different people, and it’s all been awesome.”
The Cyclones came into the match as decided underdogs after finishing with a .500 record compared to Peacock’s undefeated mark. But there Central was, leading at some point in each and every game and forcing the Toilers to dig deep to find wins.
“We hope to not do that, but it’s always good when you can come back,” Simmons said. “We work so hard together as a team, we can get out of anything. We’ve seen our team come back from 14-point deficits, so we know we can do it.”
Seeing his crew rally was no surprise to Polupski, either.
“It can’t believe the amount of times we’ve been down this year and come back and won,” he said. “In big matches, quarter-finals, semifinals, we’ve been down eight, nine points and come back. These girls have a lot of heart, they play their guts out and we’ve done that all year. I couldn’t be any prouder as a coach.”
The work isn’t finished for either team just yet.
Central and Vanier are at 4A girls regionals in Lumsden this weekend, while the Toilers will host their six-team 5A girls regional on Saturday.
“The pressure from these games is going to help us a lot at regionals and provincials,” Simmons said. “Moving forward we definitely wanted to get this over with, it’s exciting and a high-intensity game, there’s more cheering here than anywhere else. Now it just gets harder and harder, so we’ll play our best and see what we can do.”
