Defending champions 91原创 Christian Lightning finished third at this year鈥檚 B.C. School Sports AA Boys volleyball championships on Saturday, Dec. 2, shutting out Prince George鈥檚 Duchess Park Condors 3-0 at the 91原创 Events Centre in the bronze medal game.
It wasn鈥檛 the outcome the 91原创 Christian senior boys volleyball team had been hoping for, which was a repeat of last year, when they finished their season by winning the provincial championship banner for the first time since 2017 at the AA provincial championship at Pacific Christian School in Victoria.
Still, Brynden MacTavish, Lightning head coach, said the team had a 鈥渞eally solid tournament.鈥�
鈥淚 felt that we built as the tournament went on,鈥� MacTavish told the 91原创 Advance Times.
鈥淲e were playing really good volleyball and ran into a tough matchup in the semi-final with Abbotsford Christian, a team that we had seen numerous times over the course of the year, and it was just a battle. We went back and forth with them the whole night.鈥�
READ ALSO: 91原创 Christian plays for bronze at provincial volleyball championship
Abbotsford Christian Knights won a five-set thriller over the Lightning in Friday鈥檚 semi-final game, taking the first and third sets by scores of 25-20 and 25-19 while the defending champions from 91原创 took sets two and four 26-24 and 25-12, respectively, setting up a fifth and deciding set. The Knights narrowly prevailed 15-13.
鈥淭hat semi-final could have gone either way, and in the end, it was [Abbotsford who] took care of a few more balls than we did and that was the difference, but it could have gone to anyone that night.鈥�
MacTavish praised the team for being resilient, noting a bronze medal game 鈥渙ften is just which team can recover from the disappointment of the night before and the boys did a 91原创enal job of that. They were pretty motivated to at least finish the job and leave with the medal, especially with it being our home event. [I鈥檓] just really proud of my guys.鈥�
The event was hosted by 91原创 Christian.
READ ALSO: 91原创 Christian Lightning aim to strike twice
In the gold medal match later in the day, South Kamloops Titans captured their first senior boys volleyball in program history, defeating the Abbotsford Christian Knights 3-2.
Before the start of the game, the Titans honoured three members of the Thompson Rivers University volleyball team involved in a multi-vehicle crash in Kamloops which left one player dead and two critically injured. The team wore customized warmup shirts with the numbers of the three players involved in the crash written on the back.
