Muskies fall short of gold

Two Muskie court teams won silver at the NorWOSSA playoffs here Friday while the other two squads had to settle for bronze.
The junior boys’ volleyball team—Fort High’s best hope for NorWOSSA gold after a 6-2 regular-season record—swept the Kenora Broncos 25-20, 25-13, and 26-24 in the semi-final before falling in four sets to the first-place Dryden Eagles in the gold-medal match.
“We just seemed to lose our momentum and lose our focus,” Muskie head coach Duane Roen said. “My boys were not communicating the way I wanted them to. . . .
“In [the] NorWOSSA finals, against a team like Dryden, you can’t make many mistakes,” he stressed.
The Muskies took the first set 26-24 against Dryden, then fell by scores of 25-18 and 25-21 in the following two.
The boys came out roaring in the fourth set, jumping out to leads of 5-1 and 10-2 before losing 25-18.
Roen chalked up the loss to inexperience in a program that, before this breakout season, hadn’t won a game in several years.
“We didn’t keep the end in mind, and before you know it, you’re on the other end of 25 points,” he noted.
Meanwhile, the Muskie senior girls’ basketball team edged the Kenora Broncos 43-40 in the semi-final Friday, in which the black-and-gold had to stage an unexpected comeback after leading 31-23 heading into the fourth quarter.
They followed that match with a grinding 20-14 loss to the first-place Dryden Eagles in the final—a game the Muskies trailed after the first basket.
“They showed a lot of character for a young team,” head coach Ian Simpson noted.
The squad had finished in second place with a 3-8 record during the regular season, but were mismatched against the undefeated Eagles.
“This has been our best game against Dryden all year,” Simpson said, adding the fourth quarter of the final, in which the Muskies outscored Dryden 6-3, was “our best quarter” of the season.
Their junior counterparts had a tougher time against Dryden, falling 41-20 to the Eagles in the semi-final on Friday to conclude a winless season.
And the Muskie senior boys’ volleyball team, who managed to win just one set all season, didn’t put forth much in their semi-final showdown against the Eagles, losing in straight sets 25-12, 25-13, and 25-18.