Spikers endure ‘learning’ lesson

The Big Spike Volleyball Tournament held over the weekend in Winnipeg attracted high school teams from throughout Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario, including the Muskie senior boys’ squad.
Unfortunately for the black-and-gold, the competition proved a little too stiff.
“It was a real learning experience,” head coach Brian Love said, laughing at his own diplomacy. “Saw some really good ball, some really good teams.
“Manitoba is, of course, very big and some of the small-town teams [there] were real good,” he added.
Fort High played five best-of-three matches without winning so much as a set. Their first loss came to Stonewall Collegiate on Friday in a pair of close sets (25-23 and 25-18).
That was followed by losses to Niverville Collegiate (25-17/25-8) and then to NorWOSSA rival Dryden (25-15/25-19).
The Muskies didn’t fare much better Saturday, falling 25-20 and 25-17 to Maples Collegiate and then 26-24 and 25-14 to Elton Collegiate.
“There were lots of games we should’ve taken,” Love said. “We didn’t.”
But he added there was good to be seen in all of the bad.
“Our defence played well, and what you see in Manitoba is power offence,” Love remarked. “Offensively, we were lacking.”
That’s not to take anything away from the play of Jon McCoy, though, who notched eight kills in the final match and was named offensive player of the team.
Jamie Jensen got the defensive honours, and tournament sponsor Boston Pizza treated them both to lunch on the way home.
“It wasn’t our best play,” McCoy admitted. “Towards the end of the tournament, people weren’t really there to play, had no ambition.”
Jensen agreed the real problem was the team losing the mental game.
“Once people start hitting the ball out of bounds and getting in a rhythm of not hitting it in, they get down on themselves,” he remarked. “It was mental. It was all mental.
“This game is all about the mental,” Jensen stressed. “We started out with a loss and it all went downhill from there.”
“Communication was a big factor, too, I think,” added McCoy. “If someone is down, you need to bring them back up.”
The Muskie senior boys still are looking to win their first set of the season, let alone taking a match. The trip to Winnipeg better exposed some of the team’s major faults, specifically their inconsistent hitting, said Love.
“When we hit the ball the way we can, we scored,” he noted. “But unforced errors offensively is something we’re really working on this week. . . .
“Our transition game from offence to defence is working well for us. Now, we work the bugs out of our offence, we should be fine.”
Jensen said there was plenty the team was working on defensively in practice.
“Our defence is getting a lot better,” he noted. “We still gotta work on getting up the blocking. We’re passing well . . . we just gotta work on putting the ball away when we get the chance.”