The College Heights Cougars senior boys team lives and breathes volleyball.
They play it in school during class time, and long after most of the student population has left for the day. And when high school volleyball season ends in early December, they'll start thinking about their club volleyball commitments. Whatever it takes to bring home a provincial banner.
The Cougars have dominated the North Central zone this year and, with two berths in the provincial tournament up for grabs this weekend at the double-A zone championship at D.P. Todd it would be a major upset if they fail to qualify. The Cougars are the top seed in the four-team tournament and are ranked sixth in the province.
"To get to where we are now it's just been a lot of hard work in practice," said Cougars assistant coach Linden Smith. "These guys are doing volleyball basically six days a week with volleyball class in the morning, practice three days a week and tournaments, these guys are just non-stop."
The Cougars are one of the youngest senior teams in the province, with 11 Grade 11 players and just one in Grade 12 - captain Alex Benny, the team's left side backrow specialist.
Graham Walkey is the setter, Ben Shand and Jared Apolczer fill the left side of the College Heights court, Nigel Thompson and Christian Schneider are on the right side, Jonah Gilbert, Nathan Provan and Hunter Posteraro plug the middle and Nick Hansen is the defensive specialist as the Cougar libero. Other team members are left-side hitters Aiden Smith and Nehemiah Ohori. Jay Guillet is the Cougars head coach.
College Heights has dug up regular success this year on the tournament trail. After finishing seventh at a 20-team tournament against some of the top Alberta teams in Calgary to start the season, the Cougars won tournaments at Duchess Park, College Heights (Jon Bragg Memorial) and Kelly Road.
They finished tied for 19th out of 40 at the Best of the West tournament in Kelowna in mid-October and two weeks ago placed seventh at the George Elliott tournament in Winfield.
College Heights has played two of the teams ahead of them in the provincial rankings. At Best of the West they lost in straight sets to fourth-ranked Pacific Academy and at George Elliott they lost a five-set match to No. 3-ranked Clarence Fulton.
Langley will host the boys double-A and triple-A volleyball provincial championships, Dec. 2-5. Two berths are available to the top-finishing North Central teams. Last year the Cougars senior boys placed eighth in the province.
College Heights opens the four-team zone tournament against the Kelly Road Roadrunners in a semifinal match today at 5 p.m. The 12th-ranked D.P. Todd Trojans and Duchess Park Condors play their semifinal tonight at 7. The winners advance to the gold-medal game Saturday at noon. Coach Smith knows his team is heavily favoured to make it to the final but they won't be taking the Roadrunners lightly.
"Kelly Road has steadily improved over the entire season, they went from looking very nervous on the court to now looking like they're ready to compete with anybody else on the court," he said.
The Trojans have three club volleyball players - Keiran Leboe, Brandon Chow and Joel Ingham - and rely heavily on setter Ryan Gaiesky. In October they beat the Cougars in a three-set match at Best of the West.
In the triple-A boys playoffs, the Prince George Polars will be in Fort St. John to play North Peace in a best-of-three set, best-of-three match playoff series this weekend. Both will represent the North Central zone at the triple-A provincial tournament, also in Langley Dec. 2-5.
Meanwhile, in the triple-A senior girls division, the Duchess Park Condors and College Heights Cougars are ranked 1-2 provincially heading into zone playoffs. Cougars head coach Jason Olexyn says he can't ever remember two Prince George teams topping the ranking poll. He knows it will be tough to dislodge the Condors.
"That's somewhat of a first in a long time, if ever, it's been a back and forth battle for both of us," said Olexyn. "We've probably played (each other) eight times and we've only prevailed once when we beat them in the semifinals of the College Heights tournament at the end of October. They've beaten us every other time."
Keys to the Condors success this weekend in the seven-team zone tournament at the College of New Caledonia will be setter Hallie Drezet, who has already locked up a scholarship at Thomson Rivers University, and power hitter Brooke Unger.
The zone tournament starts today at 4 p.m., with Duchess Park taking on the PGSS Polars. Olexyn considers the Polars an underrated team which should have made the provincial rankings.
"PGSS is a force - they've beaten us (College Heights and Duchess Park) both and for some reason they've gotten the shaft and have not been ranked top-10 at this time," said Olexyn. "Then there's the unknown with Dawson Creek coming down. They did come to one of our tournaments and they were competitive with a lot of our top teams."
Duchess Park finished fourth at the triple-A provincials last year, while College Heights ended up 13th. The Cougars were forced to rebuild this year after losing most of their roster to graduation. Middle blocker Katherine Chrobot, libero Brittany Briere, and power hitters Kaitlyn Seath and Megan Warner were the returning players. Rookie setter Chelsea Madsen and Grade 11 middle blocker Jynessa Caulback have also played major roles in the Cougars' success this season.
Kelly Road plays Williams Lake and College Heights meets Correlieu at 5 p.m. Dawson Creek plays against Kelly Road at 6:10 p.m. Crossover playoffs start at 9 a.m. Saturday, with the final at 5 p.m.
