All that glitters is not (necessarily) gold at 18U Omnium du Quebec(PHOTOS) By Paul Edwards, with photos by Eva Edwards
November 9, 2008 – The 18U CAPS girls set off across the provincial border over the weekend to compete in the Volleyball Quebec Omnium 18 ans et moins, at l’Université de Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke, Quebec. The girls left Saturday afternoon, arriving in time for a team dinner and a pre-tournament session of words of wisdom and motivational video clips – clips that you might not expect to see from a volleyball coach, and further proof of Coach Hannay’s determination to think “outside the box” when it comes to striving to achieve excellence.
Speaking of excellence – this tournament is the second of three which the staff has tagged as development events – events in which the girls would work towards implemention of the individual and team technical knowledge they had learned in the first few months of this season, in a less stressful environment, where winning was not at all the main goal.
Well... that’s the impression we were under anyway. (Cue the free Volleyball Québec “stress” balls.)
The CAPS we were watching not only practiced what their coaches have so diligently been preaching, but they did it in an extremely exciting manner, resulting in a trip to the gold medal match against (les) Bleu et Or 1 de Moncton. There was certainly a little of everything on display in this final. (“Time out ref. Time out ... Please?”) If play execution and systems were the goal, then the back-and-forth, very close loss of the first set would have certainly been to your liking. If watching a group of determined young ladies claw their way back from a perfect storm of early bad luck (and yes, a few errors) is more to your liking, then that surprisingly entertaining second set loss would have definitely fit the bill. Suffice it to say that this long-time watcher of the sport has rarely gotten so much enjoyment out of what was – in effect – a one-sided loss. A better break or two and that match would almost certainly have been extended to a tie-breaker for gold.
Still... the banner was not the goal. It was theory and implementation and what I like to call “dedication to the ball” which were the goals of this event, and these girls most certainly did not disappoint. According to Coach Jeremy, “You gotta taste the sour to appreciate the sweet. The weekend was a huge success – the sight of our new systems in play showed us the value of our hard work from weeks past. The loss in the final reminded us that we still have hard work to do in the weeks ahead. Nothing will be more valuable to us than our deep desire to be our best – all the time – in whatever we’re doing. Whatever it takes.”
Thanks very much to the Greens for organizing all the details of getting the girls to and from the event. Thanks to the organizers and to l’Université de Sherbrooke for staging such a well-run, exciting tournament. Thanks to all the parents and family members who made the effort to travel and to cheer on our CAPS as they represented Ontario at the Omnium. Thanks to Eva Edwards for sacrificing so much of her time at these events to take all these amazing pictures. And thanks, of course, to our coaching staff who continue to work magic with this wonderful group of young ladies.
The 18U CAPS are next in action at the OVA 18U Provincial Cup at Loyalist CVI, on December 8th in Kingston.
