Hub Staff

Although they didn't move on to the finals, the Saugeen District Secondary School (SDSS) Girls’ Volleyball team showed outstanding skills during the ‘AA' CWOSSA Girls’ Volleyball tournament hosted by SDSS February 25 and 26.

Eight teams from as far away as Guelph made the trek to Port Elgin during the highly publicized #onstorm to take part in the competition.

SDSS Coach and tournament host Tim Smith said he had been up since 6 a.m., and had never fielded so many text messages regarding weather in his life. Adding that even though the SDSS team didn't make it to the semi-finals he thought they played well, but needed to work on their serving, something that has given the team trouble all year.

“A lot of the teams that are here...about five out of the eight are considered to be ‘AAA’, and have moved down to ‘AA’ so we’re competing against schools that have 900+ kids in them, and we’re only a school of 600, so it’s hard to compete. And the (other schools) live in areas with club programs and we don't have any, so it’s hard to compete and stay on top of that,” Smith said.

SDSS played three games during the tournament in the ‘B’ division. Their match-up against St. James saw them lose by their highest margin, 25-13 and 25-12. Their game against the Norwell Redmen from Palmerston was close with a score of 25-21 and 25-18 and their final game against Holy Trinity was 25-12 and 25-16 for Trinity. Holy Trinity and Norwell moved on to the finals.

“We stayed motivated which is good which can sometimes be an issue,” said SDSS player Kelly Robertson (grade 11).

She added, “I think we played well in our second game, I don't know if that was because who we were against though, and our serves this morning (against St.James) weren’t that good.”