Getting ready for zones
Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter
Holy Cross Collegiate, HCC, was once again the host of a volleyball tournament this past weekend, though this time it was for the junior A boys and girls teams.
Volleyball season is almost done, with zones coming up during the Remembrance Day weekend. Nicole Cordes is the coach of the girls team, and has been the coach for some of the girls since they were in the sixth grade.
“This year I implemented a different defense/offense, it’s called a six-two,” said Cordes.
“The setters have to be extremely strong, fast on the court getting to the position and stuff like that. That’s been kind of gradually coming and they’re starting to get it now.”
She thinks things are finally starting to pull together and the girls are getting used to the new system. Cordes had been hoping for a strong finish in this last tournament, wanting to walk away with a medal, but unfortunately it wasn’t in the cards for the girls.
“It went fairly well, we ended up winning our quarter finals, so that put us into semi-finals and then we lost to Calgary Christian who ended up in the final,” said Cordes.
“The scores were fairly decent with that game, and then we ended up in a bronze medal match…and we ended up losing in that match, but the games were close as well in that one.
“It was a good…tournament, there was teams that were really, really strong in the digging department. Then there were teams that were really strong in the hitting department.”
She said the girls missed a lot of serves, which hurt them on the scoreboard. The plan for now is focus on serving and passing in the next couple of weeks. This weekend the girls are in Three Hills, then the following weekend they are in Brooks before coming home to zones. Because HCC is the host school the girls automatically have a spot in the tournament.
“We’re going to basically be working on our really fundamentals, our strong basics,” said Cordes.
“I told the girls I really want to finish stronger in each tournament to come with zones of course being our strongest finish. So that’s basically my goal for the end of the year in the next three weeks.”