It was a historic run for the Southpointe Academy Titans at the B.C. “A” Girls Volleyball Championships in Prince George.
For the first time ever, the Tsawwassen independent school reached the provincial volleyball podium, culminating an exhausting three-day run with a silver medal after a 3-1 loss to Langley’s Credo Christian in Saturday night’s championship match.
Along the way, they took out the tournament’s No. 4 and No. 1 seeds to reach the final, doing it with just eight players, along with a Grade 9 call-up.
The South Fraser regional champions and the No. 5 seed served noticed by sweeping their three power pool matches to open the 16-team tournament, then defeated North Vancouver’s Lions Gate Christian to begin Friday’s playoff round. It was prior to a quarter-final match with No. 4 Nanaimo when head coach Michaela Staller had seen enough of the competition to realize what her girls could accomplish.
“At that point we kind of had a big pep talk that it’s these moments you will remember about high school,” explained Staller. “It was a group that started to develop confidence as the weekend went along and you could really start to see it in their play. They looked at Nanaimo as it was our game to win and it was very emotional because our school has never gone that far before.”
Southpointe dropped the opening set to Nanaimo before roaring back with three straight wins. They followed the same script to defeat top ranked Unity Christian from Chilliwack in the semis.
The Titans finally ran out of steam with a four set loss to No. 2 Credo Christian that saw each of the games go right down to the wire.
“By the end we were just too sore and tired. We were making unforced errors we normally don’t make,” added Staller. “It was just one of those things where we just didn’t have enough of a bench or enough recovery time. If we didn’t have to play a seventh game it could have been a different story, but the girls were all still pretty happy.”
Left side hitter Lucie Shaver and setter Kitty Song were named tournament all-stars. The roster also includes Natalie Longo, Savanna Chahal, Louisa Gong, Sara Croy, Avery Shin, Mariam Hamza and Grade 9 call-up Ariana Tejeda Sadat.
