Our alarms rang at 6:15 on the morning of February 20th. After the long drive to Barrie the night before, we were up and ready to face any competition. Our goal for the whole day was to be very loud to intimidate the other teams.

We were placed in a pool with two other teams: the Orillia Suns and Fusion Purple. Since our pool was smaller than the others, we were expected to play 3 games to 25, no matter the outcome of the first two.

Our first match was against the Orillia Suns. With a very loud warm up, we were ready to take them on! We started out the tournament strong, taking the first game by a score of 25-13.  In the second, we kept our energy up and kept pushing the whole game, but Orillia was able to come back and win it 27-25. The final game we came back 25-23 to take over and finish it off strong.

The second pool play match was against our own Fusion Purple team. We were really pumped to play the other 16U team, and with a good fight put up by both sides we took the first game 25-20. The second game, we came out even stronger with a win of 25-14. We decided to change up our line up in the third set, and although we had lots of fun we did not keep our heads in the game and ended up falling short 23-25.

Winning both of our matches put us first in our pool. Next, we were up against the Clarington Grizzlies in the quarter finals. With our game faces on, we finished off the match in two games: 25-17 and 25-12.

Then it was off to the semi finals against Peterborough Thunder. We started off playing our game, and it’s fair to say that our intimidation strategy worked after taking the first game 25-7. Going into the second, we knew that we could not let up and we had to continue playing our game. We finished off that match in two sets as well, with a score in the second set of 25-16.

Entering the finals undefeated was very exciting.  Matched up against the Wildcats VBC, this was the volleyball we had been waiting to play all day.  With a rough start we fell behind, and although we pushed the whole game we came up short 22-25. Entering the second game, we were ready for our payback. We started off strong and really put the pressure on with our consistent serving.  We ended up taking that one 25-20. Then came the dreaded third game to 15 - do or die.  We knew that we needed to win this in order to bring home gold. We accomplished our goal of being the first to 8 points, and had the lead – but not for long. The Wildcats stole the lead and got ahead 12-9. We managed to come back and tie the game at 12-12.  It was neck and neck from that point on. After some tough calls from the referee, we knew we just had to focus and play our game. This was the most intense game of the day; it went point for point, back and forth. Our opponent ended up winning the game 17-15. We brought home the silver, but we gave that game our all. Good job girls!

Special thanks, as always to the parents (our biggest and loudest fans) and to the coaches for their great support and encouragement!