George Freeman Girls Volleyball team JJ zone champions

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The George Freeman School (GFS) girls’ volleyball team emerged victorious in the JJ Zone Championship Nov. 12-13. 

The tournament was hosted at GFS, so it was home court for the team as they went undefeated over the course of the tournament.

“We’ve had a really good season, they played hard all year and pretty early on we thought we probably had a good chance to win it,” said coach Julie Wallace. “We’ve been working super hard the whole season on getting to that point and then the day finally came and it really paid off. They played super well all day, we only dropped one set the entire day and went undefeated to win every game and the banner.”

The zone tournament marked the end of the season for the girls as there is no provincial competition for their age group.

GFS placed first in the opening round robin of three games which earned them a bye to the semifinals. Conquering that, they then moved to the finals.

Over the course of the tournament, the team only lost a set once in their semifinal game and otherwise dominated their opponents in straight sets.

Wallace said over the course of the season, the girls have done consistently well and have been steadily improving towards their goal of claiming the zone championship.

Having done so, Wallace added, marks a special set of bragging rights for the team.

“We did fairly well in our first tournament and then in our own tournament we won the consolation final (and) we got a silver medal in Canmore,” she said. “The girls really wanted to win a zone banner and since our school is relatively new, they are the first girls’ team to win one and the second banner total for any sport at our school.”

No team, not even champions start out perfect, as Wallace explained her girls still need to refine their teamwork, among other areas for improvement. 

“My girls learned new positions this year, we learned new rotations and they worked hard the entire time,” she said. “Once we started having some success with the rotations and with new conditions then they wanted to get better and better.”

The team tried three different player rotations this year before settling on what worked for them, opting to use a 5-1 rotation with two designated setters and no libero (back-row defensive specialist).

Overall, she explained that she found her team to be very well-balanced and more than a bit of a mixed bag of talents. 

Wallace said she felt the girls were developing well and not lacking in any particular aspect of the game, which made for a very versatile style of play. 

“They develop their skills in all areas of the game so there’s not really any spot where we were feeling like we were lacking heading into zones, we just needed it all to come together and click at the right time,” se added.

Not pointing out any singular player, Wallace added her Grade 9’s had played extremely well, but opted more to commemorate the whole team, keeping up the mentality she set up for the girls all season about working as a team to succeed.

Her plan for next year is to repeat much of the same goal setting, team building and skill development for the incoming team.