Joey Payeur
From 1-7 to one unbelievable ride—and it’s not over yet.
The Muskie senior boys volleyball team is heading to Dryden to take on the best in the province after besting the St. Iganatius Falcons 2-1 in their best-of-three NWOSSAA championship series at Fort High this past weekend.
Fort Frances is seeded No. 14 in the 16 -team field at the OFSAA ‘AA’ provincial championships that begin on Wednesday and run through Friday in what will be the black-and-gold’s first appearance at the all-Ontarios in more than 15 years.
“I’m ecstatic … it hasn’t registered yet,” said shocked and thrilled Muskie coach Kirsten Talsma, whose arrival with her husband from Parry Sound just before the season started turned out to be a godsend for a program that finished last in the NorWOSSA regular season last year and was ousted in short order in the conference semifinal.
“It’s just overwhelming,” she added. “I’m so proud of all of them.”
The Muskies, who defeated the Falcons at a tournament in Dryden earlier this year, captured Friday’s opening match 3-1 (25-21, 24-26, 25-21, 25-21) in front of a raucous home crowd.
With most of that crowd home sleeping on Saturday morning, the Falcons came out like a much different team to tie the series with a 3-0 sweep (25-22, 25-13, 25-15).
The trend appeared to be continuing in Saturday afternoon’s tie-breaking clash, with St. Ignatius rolling to a 25-12 victory in the first set.
But a bigger and noisier crowd than for the morning session found its voice and the Fort found its attack game at the net, led by Henry Geyshick, Thunder White and Connor Bujold, to get rolling in the second and won three straight sets (25-15, 25-18, 25-22) to touch off a joyful frenzy of celebration on the court and in the stands.
“It’s amazing … We made history today,” said White, who watched the final points from the bench with a severe leg cramp that knocked him out of action with the Fort up 23-16.
St. Ignatius almost rallied to force a fifth set, but Geyshick hammered the game-winning kill off a Falcons block and out to clinch the victory.
Fort Frances will be in Pool ‘B’ at OFSAA and will start off Thursday at 9 a.m. with what should be its toughest preliminary-round test against another group of Falcons, these ones being from No. 3-ranked Ecole secondaire catholique Franco-Cité from Ottawa.
The Muskies will then take on the No. 8-rated Dr. G.W. Williams Secondary School Wildcats (Aurora) at 1:30 p.m.
On Friday, Fort Frances closes pool play against the No. 9-ranked Cobourg Collegiate Institute Wolves (Cobourg) at 10:30 a.m.
One good note for the Muskies is they avoided being in the same pool as the top-ranked Eden High School Eagles (St. Catharines), who enter OFSAA having amazingly won the last eight provincial titles in a row.
The top two finishers in each of the four pools will advance to the championship quarter-finals later on Friday, while the third- and fourth-place finishers will be grouped in the consolation quarter-finals that begin the same day.
Meanwhile, the Muskie senior girls basketball team almost made it two Fort teams heading to OFSAA, but lost a pair of heart-pounding games to be swept 2-0 by the host Hammarskjold Vikings from Thunder Bay in their NWOSSAA best-of-three battle this past weekend.
With Vikings star centre Aliisa Heiskanen hurting her knee early in Friday’s opener and taking her out of action for almost the rest of Game 1 and all of Game 2, the Muskies gave Hammarskjold everything it could handle in a rematch of last year’s NWOSSAA final which the Vikings won easily in two blowout games at Fort High.
But Fort Frances lost 24-23 in Game 1 on Friday, although a scoresheet error that had the Muskies originally losing 24-21 was later discovered, meaning the Muskies didn’t try and need to sink a three-pointer to tie as they were under the impression they did.
In Game 2 on Saturday, the black-and-gold had a two-point lead in the dying moments when Ashley Croswell was whistled for a foul with two seconds to play.
The Vikings calmly sunk both free throws to force overtime, then used strong defence and more clutch work from the charity stripe down the stretch to grab a 27-21 decision and advance to the OFSAA provincial ‘AA’ girls championship in Kingsville starting on Thursday.
Top scorers for both teams were unavailable at press time.
