Gillons’ captures 10th-straight title

Seven and three equals 10—simple math that added up to yet another happy ending for Candy Greengrass.
“It certainly is a nice round number,” smiled Greengrass, who along with her teammates survived a seven-match, three-hour marathon to help Gillons’ win its 10th-consecutive Fort Frances Women’s Volleyball League championship last night at Fort High.
“We’ve kind of been lacking this year. We lost some players, and picked up some more,” Greengrass noted. “But tonight, things just felt right for the first time all season.”
Gillons’, who had finished third after the regular season, began the night with a two-game total points match against the upstart Wildcats, which ended the season sixth but advanced to last night’s final round by upsetting the fifth-place Power Paks and the second-place Die Hards the previous week.
The underdogs pushed the defending champs to the brink by winning the first game 26-24, but Gillons’ battled back to win the second 25-18 and move on based on point differential.
Scared Hitless, who won the regular-season crown, were sitting pretty thanks to the double-elimination format of the playoffs, needing to win only one best-of-three clash with Gillons’.
Gillons’, on the other hand, had to beat Scared Hitless in two-straight matches to win the league title.
And they did just that. After sweeping the opening match by scores of 25-22 and 25-18, Gillons’ made it three-straight with a 25-21 victory in the opening game of the second match.
But with the score tied 20-20 in game two and sitting only five points from elimination, Scared Hitless bore down and nabbed a 25-21 win to extend the second match to its limit.
The third game was nip-and-tuck for most of the way, with Gillons’ breaking open a 15-14 game with a 5-2 run that put them up 20-16. Scared Hitless never recovered, and Greengrass drilled an ace for the final point to secure the title for Gillons’.
“[The level of competition] was unreal this year,” an exhausted but ecstatic Greengrass said afterwards. “You wouldn’t even believe it. Anybody could have won the playoffs.”