The Estevan Comprehensive School (ECS) Elecs senior boys and girls volleyball teams will have their work cut out for them if they hope to retain the Co-op Challenge series with the Weyburn Comprehensive School Eagles.
The Eagles swept Tuesday night’s matches at the ECS gymnasium. Weyburn won the senior girls match 3-1 (25-19, 22-25, 25-22 and 25-22), while the Eagles senior boys beat their Estevan counterparts 3-0 (25-13, 25-18 and 25-14).
Senior girls coach Nicole Rogalski said she was pleased with the performance of the Elecs. This year’s team is one of the stronger ones that she has coached, but Weyburn is always a tough opponent for them.
“We were able to keep our momentum a little bit, and if we lost the momentum, we were able to get it back,” said Rogalski. “The only things that we need to work on a little bit is our serving and our consistency and our serve-receive passing,”
On the offensive side of the ball, Rogalski said they had lots of strong attacks at the net. Defensively, she was pleased with their blocking.
The match marked the first time they have played Weyburn this year. The two teams usually only meet at the Co-op Challenge and the regional playdowns.
“I think we could have easily taken another set off of them, but that just came with our own serving mistakes,” said Rogalski. “They’re pretty much what we expected. They’re a great team. They’re very consistent with everything that they do.”
Senior boys head coach Nathan Johnson said they managed to play at a very high level at times, but they struggled to maintain consistency.
“At times we put some pressure on them with our serve,” said Johnson. “That was our goal last night, because they have four or five really strong attackers. We didn’t want to just be putting the ball in the court and letting them hammer it at us. So we wanted to put them into some trouble in serve-receive.”
In the second set, they had a run of six or seven points in a row.
This is a young Elecs team, as they lost their entire starting lineup to graduation last year. The Co-op Challenge was a new experience for this year’s players.
“They’re young guys, and to have that many people in the gym, while they are supporting us, they put a lot of pressure on themselves to play well, and I think we saw some nerves in that first set, making some mistakes that are uncharacteristic,” Johnson said.
A large crowd turned out at the ECS gymnasium to watch the games, and it will likely be the largest crowd they face this year. Being at home brought up the intensity of the games, Rogalski said. While it’s a fun rivalry between the two schools, the games mean a lot to both teams.
The Co-op Challenge is a best-of-four series between the two schools each year, similar to the McLeod Series for basketball, with the first two matches in one community and the other two in the other city. If one school wins three matches, they win the series.
If each team wins two matches, then it comes down to sets won and lost as the first tie-breaker, and points for and against as the second.
The second half of the series will be contested Oct. 16 in Weyburn.
The games for Estevan were originally scheduled for Oct. 9, but they were pushed back a day due to a scheduling conflict in the school.
Estevan won the series last year, after Weyburn won the first two in 2016 and 2017.
