Lucas Punkari
With students returning to the halls of Fort High on Monday following the Christmas break, the players and coaches of the four Muskie court teams were forced to kick themselves into overdrive for a busy week of competition.
All four squads resumed NorWOSSA action yesterday afternoon in Dryden (the scores weren’t available by press time), with home matches against the Kenora Broncos taking place tomorrow afternoon at Fort High.
Coupled with out-of-town tournaments this weekend for the hoopsters in Thunder Bay, and the spikers travelling to Kenora, everyone has been making sure they were ready for what’s arguably the biggest week of the season so far.
“I told the guys [this] is going to be a really important week for us,” said senior boys’ basketball head coach Bryce Coyle.
“With the two league games this week, it can change the entire landscape of the standings so we want to win those games,” he noted.
“And in our Thunder Bay tournament, we are going to be facing some stiff competition there, so it’s important for us to do well there, too.”
Heading into yesterday’s matches in Dryden, the senior boys led the four Muskie squads with a perfect 2-0 record.
The junior boys’ basketball and junior girls’ volleyball teams both were at 1-1 while the senior girls still were searching for their first league victory (0-2).
While Coyle stressed his team is just taking everything one game at a time, he feels this weekend’s tournament in the Lakehead will show exactly where the black-and-gold currently stand.
“We plan to use this tournament as a measuring stick to see where we are at,” Coyle said of the senior boys, who will open up their tournament slate Friday afternoon against the Westgate Tigers.
“Whoever wins our league will have to play one of the teams from Thunder Bay that we will see this weekend in the NWOSSAA finals, so we want to go there and play well and not get blown out of the water,” he reasoned.
“Our goal is to send a message while we are there, and we hope to do just that.”
As for the juniors, head coach Jeff Vandahl has been running his team through nearly everything in the playbook prior to this week’s league matches and the weekend tournament in Thunder Bay, which will see the Muskies take on St. Patrick’s in their first game Friday.
“We had a checklist that we ran through here in our first practice,” he noted. “And even though we didn’t get through everything on it, I think we should be in pretty good shape.
“When Kenora comes here [tomorrow], they will be using a zone defence, so we’ve been stressing about moving the ball around the court by making good passes and in taking care of the basketball.
“In Thunder Bay, we will be going against a lot of really strong teams that we haven’t seen before, so I hope that guys learn a lot from the experience,” Vandahl added.
Volleyball
As for the spikers, senior head coach Duane Roen and junior bench boss Jason Cain have been working on improving some different aspects of their teams’ play prior to their league matches this week.
“Sometimes it’s tough to get everything back going right away from the holidays, especially when you have two league games right off the hop, but everything is coming together,” Cain remarked.
“We have a full squad this week, which we didn’t have the first time we went to Dryden, so I’m hoping to see a lot more of the same things that we did well against Kenora here in league play,” he noted.
“We don’t have a lot of practice time but we’ve been making the best of it,” said Roen.
“Right now we’ve been working a lot on our passing game, and to get ourselves to be the best that we can be for the end of the season and for the playoffs,” he stressed.
Both volleyball squads then will look to continue their improvements this weekend in Kenora, where they’ll be taking part in a tournament starting Friday afternoon.
“For us, the tournaments are a great opportunity to allow everyone to play, and the girls know that,” Roen said.
“It’s a great chance for them to show their stuff, and what improvements they have made as of late, and I expect to see some of that this weekend,” he added.
Meanwhile, the juniors will split into two squads for the weekend, giving them a chance to gain a lot of experience out on the floor.
“This is a much bigger tournament than the one we took part in earlier this year in Dryden,” Cain noted.
“There’s going to be 16 teams there this weekend, and that includes a lot of the teams from Thunder Bay, so it will be nice to have the girls go up against those teams and see how we do against them,” he said.
