Wetaskiwin Volleyball Club captures its first Provincial title 

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The U16 Sabres Volleyball Club started the season with one goal: to move up tiers.  

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In their U15 year, this team won a provincial silver medal in Tier 6.  

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Coming into their I16 season the team decided their objective would be to battle their way up the rankings and try and get into Tier 4. 

On April 6 and 7 they won a gold medal in Volleyball Alberta Premier 3, the win they needed to propel them into Tier 4 status.  

Entering Provincials on April 27th and 28th they were ranked 13 out of 16 teams in Tier 4 in Alberta.  Provincials starts with pool play to determine the final seed before playoffs.  In pool play the Sabres struggled with the faster play of a higher division and showed nerves and dropped from 13th to 15th seed in the tournament.  This meant an incredible hard playoff rounds was ahead if the Sabres were going to come out in anything but the bottom. 

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In the playoffs, the Sabres first faced the number two seed team SAVC Storm from Lethbridge.  One would think that two versus 15 would be an automatic win for the second seed.  

The Sabres however, now playing the underdog, seemed to let all the nerves go and defeated the second seed in three sets.  

Their next opponent was the number seven seed, Fog Fire from Edmonton.  

The Sabres continued their great play and disposed of the Fire in two straight sets.  In the semi-finals the Sabres faced a very strong opponent from Calgary, number three seed Dome Defenders. 

The Defenders took the first set easily, however the Sabres fought back with their best game of the season to defeat the Defenders in three sets and advance to the finals. 

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 In the finals came the number one seed, SW Wildfire.  The Sabres took the first set easily and forced Wildfire to fight and claw back.  Wildfire responded in the second set with a win forcing a third and final set.  In a very close third set the Sabres found themselves down 10-6 but fought back and took the set 15-13 to take the provincial title. 

“It was so amazing to watch as the girls played with everything they had against bigger and higher seeded teams.  I could not be any prouder of how we played over the weekend, it was a total team effort,” said Sabres head coach John Strong. 

The Sabres also earned two Tournament All-star spots which went to setter Lucy Pitcher and left side Annika Ernst 

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