On Feb 10/11 three Ontario U18B teams traveled to the Nittany
volleyball tournament at State College PA. This is one of the biggest
bid tournaments in the US for the US Junior Olympics National
Volleyball Finals to be held this year in Atlanta. The three Ontario
U18B teams were Durham Attack, Toronto TSX and Ottawa Mavericks. In
all there were 58 U18B teams in the tournament which featured the
strongest US clubs from the North East and Eastern seaboard.
All three Canadian teams made the last four of the tournament with
Durham Attack (10-0) and Toronto TSX (8-2) playing the final with
Attack winning in 3 games. I’m told this is the first time in 7 years
that two Canadian teams appeared in the Nittany final and I’m not sure
the last time when 3 Canadian/Ontario teams were in the last four. It
certainly shows the strength of volleyball in this province and our
own U18B team which was remarked on by many of the US club coaches and
officials.
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Pool Play:
What do mean we’re ranked 17th? This seemed odd to us since this team
won this tournament last year in the 17U category. Oh well, the
team didn’t let this get to them and they cruised through the first
round robin matches beating Ocean VBC 25-13 and 25-23, Yorketown from
Pennsylvania 25-18 and 25-15, Beantown (Boston) 25-11 and 25-22 and
finally Pittsburgh 25-19 and 25-15.
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Power Pool:
Win these matches to guarantee a spot in the top play-off pool.
After the round robin teams are re-seeded into Power Pools which play
to determine seeds for the play-offs. This was much more of a
challenge for the team and both of these matches went to three sets.
However, when it mattered the team pulled it together and won both
matches thanks to some good defense and some great attacking and
blocking by our middles Ben White and Matt Polley. First the
team battled Nittany Gold a very classy and very good local club with
some really big players. The first set went to the local boys
with a score of 25-21 but our team fought back in the second set
winning a see-saw battle by a score of 29-27. In the third set
our passing and defense was spot on and we came away with a 15-11 win.
The next match had us matched up against a much improved Damons
Selects team and once again we dropped the first set by a score of
25-21. Once again we recovered to win a close set in the second by a
score of 25-23 and then turned it on in the third set to win 15-9.
It was off to the pre-quarter having earned the 2nd seed in the
tournament.
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Pre-Quarter and Quarter Finals: What do you mean Rosser is cramping
up?
Having one of our most dangerous attackers cramp up didn’t faze our
guys and our back up setter Jeff Torraville came in did a great job
filling in for Winston Rosser at right side. Our team just seemed to
get better as the day progressed and we had a good battles with Doc
Halidays in the pre-quarter and with a new club with some very classy
coaches and players called Latitude 42 hailing from New Hampshire.
In the end the team won both matches in two sets with scores of 25-21,
25 -18 and 25-20, 25-23. The real question was did we have anything
left for the semi-finals against a very good and very cocky squad in
from New York called Eden Mizuno.
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Semi-finals: How do we score on these guys?
This was an epic battle against a team that was not happy to lose to
us last year in the first power pool match. There was a ton of
chirping and trash talking between both teams and the referees had to
warn both teams three times during the match to tone it down. It
was a huge side out and defensive battle with both teams exchanging
big hits and big digs. Mark Jeffery and Kyle Rausch, both
liberos, were patrolling our back row and came up with some great
passing and even better digs. When the dust settled, it was our
boys on top with scores of 22-25, 26-24 and 15-12 with a huge finish
on a right side X run by our setter Matt Gibson to Winston Rosser who
hammered the ball down to end the match with authority.
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Gold Medal Match:
This was the battle of Ontario with the TSX Toronto Blues having
earned their way to the final with a convincing semi-final win over
another Ontario team, the Ottawa Mavericks. This was the first time in
seven years that two teams from Ontario met in the final of the
Nittany Ninvitational, the last time involving Bronte Beach from
Oakville and the Scarborough Falcons. This time around it was a
great three set match with both teams exchanging big blocks, big kills
and huge digs. It was also a very friendly match by comparison
to the semis and both teams seemed to realize that they represented
the same province and seemed to want to get along. When it was
over, the Durham Attack squad managed to outlast TSX with scores of
25-21, 17-25 and 15-12.
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It is
important to recognize that this victory was accomplished with a true
team effort. Players like Dan Waldie who moved from middle to play
left side to give our left sides a bit of a break and he played great.
Mike Goulding played perhaps his best tournament to date at left side
and David Canavan also made some big steps to improve on his shot
making from left side. Our two liberos were stellar and our
setting was very consistent. Jeff Torraville who came in at
right side and put up some big blocks and had some important kills
during power pool matches. Our middles were also great and other
teams were constantly committing to them which allowed our left and
right side attackers to have to deal with single blocks quite often.
A
fantastic job guys, you should be proud of what you have
accomplished!!
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