BANFF – The Banff Bears’ senior boys claimed silver on the home courts during a volleyball tournament while gearing up for the upcoming zones.
Macsen Hempstead, outside hitter, felt this has been the best the team has played over the course of season, and highlighted it was possibly be the first time the Bears’ have been in the gold medal match at their home tournament.
“There was some hard teams, and we definitely played the best we ever have compared to the other tournaments and games we’ve had,” he said. “Everyone was pretty locked in.”
Development has been the name of the game as the team started to find their groove with passing, hitting and team coordination, which were all factors to their success on the courts on Friday and Saturday (Oct. 25-26).
“Their passing over the course of this tournament was a lot better than we’ve seen in the past… and just the team play has definitely improved over the career,” head coach Michael Geertsema said.
“It’s exactly where we want to see them ramping up [to] championships in a couple weeks.”
The Olds Koinonia Christian School Royals came out on top of the tournament after winning a rowdy final set of 25-23 against the Bears.
“I thought we put up the best fight we could,” said Hempstead. “Twenty-three points on them is great, and we are the only team that took a set from them on Friday out of the whole tournament.”
With the hometown crowd filling the chairs around the gym, Hempstead felt the added support and noise helped them rank among the top teams.
“For pretty much all of our games, the stands were loaded,” said Hempstead. “Everyone’s there, half of Banff was there, the entire school. It was pretty sweet. Everyone’s getting stoked.”
Canmore’s Our Lady of Snows Catholic Academy was on the courts, however, didn’t rank among the top teams and played in the consolation bracket.
Although the Canmore Wolverines’ name was missing from the tournament roster, players from the neighbouring town were playing in a Bears jersey as they didn’t have enough players for their own senior team this year.
The Bears’ have been playing in the 2A division, but with the combined team they will be playing in the 3A zones this year, meaning they will face off against larger schools that they haven’t seen before.
Next week the Bears will be heading to Strathmore for their first tournament against the 3A schools, which Geertsema said will be the “real test”.
“We haven’t faced that yet, so it’ll be interesting to see how that's going to look for zones in a couple weeks,” he said.
The junior and senior girls’ and boys’ teams will be headed to zones on Nov. 15.
A large part of putting together the tournament in Banff is being able to provide accommodation for the eight travelling teams, which Geertsema gave thanks to the Wim and Nany Pauw Foundation for accompanying discounted hotel rates that allowed teams to compete in the mountain town.
“That really makes a difference,” he said. “It's so great to have home tournaments and good competition and good support from the community.”