The Princess Margaret Mustangs senior boys volleyball walked off their home court Wednesday with a split in AA exhibition league play.
The Mustangs hosted Kelowna’s L’anse Au Sable Scorpions winning 25-11 and 25-14, then bowed to the Okanagan Secondary Hornets of Oliver 25-8, 22-25 and 11-15.
Mustang Reece Haberstock said they played pretty good against the Scorpions. In practise they placed an emphasis on serves and that work paid off with Nick Lozinski and Todd Corrie reeling off several consecutive hits the Scorpions couldn’t handle.
“It helped have us come out with energy and to make our first serves is awesome,” said Haberstock, a setter.
The Mustangs also did work on free balls, which helped in rallies. Haberstock said he was able to open things up for their attack.
“The big thing is to freeze up the blockers,” he said. “That makes it easier to hit the outsides.”
Mustangs coach Rich Corrie said the Scorpions are a new team to volleyball and showed enthusiasm.
“They dug up a lot of balls early, caught our guys off guard a little bit at the beginning of the first set,” said Corrie. “We got some good scoring runs on their serves. That allowed us to calm things down a bit. Once we got into the match a bit more, we attacked the ball much better.”
Against the Hornets, Corrie said the Mustangs played well, but made too many hitting and serving errors in the last two sets. It didn’t help the Mustangs that they were missing players to illness.
Last weekend the Mustangs were in Kelowna for the Best of the West tournament and won two of five matches. The Mustangs defeated Chilliwack's Sardis Secondary Falcons by identical 25-16 scores and lost to Richmond's McMath Secondary Wildcats in three sets, 22-25, 25-21, 11-15 to finish second in their pool. They had their best match of the season in a loss to the Abbotsford Christian Knights 25-19, 22-25, 13-15. In the consolation semi-final, the Mustangs beat the Rutland Voodoos 19-25, 25-16, 15-13 then lost in the consolation final to Cranbrook's Mt. Baker Wild in two straight.
"We really progressed (last) weekend. It was nice to see," said Corrie. "We haven't had a lot of game play (Read: Maggie Mustangs senior boys contained by Coyotes),not a lot of tournaments yet. we came a long way. I think showed a lot of improvement over the weekend. We played some really tough teams and played them very well."
This weekend the Mustangs travel to Langley for a tournament.