Spartans take home provincial bronze

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

The Strathmore Spartans senior boys volleyball team ended off what was a strong season, earning the bronze medal in straight sets (25-16, 25-20) over the Louis St. Laurent Barons in what was a very tough provincial tournament last week in Grande Prairie.
“We had to go in prepared to compete for every point,” said head coach Cole Hintz. “The teams we were playing were just that much better compared to some of the tournaments we’ve seen this year. It was an exhausting journey all weekend long.”
He said that every match they played, the team prepared to be mentally focused and made the right adjustments to what the other teams were doing to try and limit some of their strengths.
Hintz enjoyed seeing the work the boys put in the last three years together paying off in building the program to competing at a provincial level.
“Some of these guys, it wasn’t just a come in and work for one year kind of thing,” said Hintz. “It’s something they put in the time in for the last three years. They always had the desire and ability to work hard. As they played more and more together as time went on they became better volleyball players.
“We had a lot of really good athletes who relatively had limited volleyball experience than some of these other players.”
Graduating left side Matthew Cool said the team opened up the tournament with a poor performance but their ability to rally back and take third place was the thing he was most happy about.
“To experience it with our team was just great,” he said. “We gelled more, had better communication and just played together as a unit better.
“We had better setting by our setter Dion and our passing was pretty good. Just an overall good performance.”
He added that to cap off his Strathmore High School athletics career with a medal in his favourite sport was amazing.