By Darren Lum

The Red Hawks girls’ junior volleyball team went winless but gained valuable experience at the Junior West Mixer hosted on Tuesday Dec. 8 by the Haliburton Highlands Secondary School.

Coach Sharon Dibblee pointed out the round-robin exhibition tournament that included Kawartha area West schools was more than just about wins and losses.

“The purpose of the tournament was to ‘get the jitters out’ and have everybody play to see what each player could do in a game” she wrote in an email.

It was a slow start for the team and that is to be expected for a young team which has only two players with previous high school experience (one being a libero – defensive specialist) she added.

“They settled in and had some excellent serves some great rallies and a couple of really good scrambles. We were flat against St. Thomas. The girls were tired and it showed on the court” she said.
Statistically the Hawks’ only success in five two-game matches during the tournament came against Brock who they beat 25-18.

There were a lot of positives for the team to build on for the future.

“It looks promising despite the final results in this tournament” she said. “The tournament gave coach Dan Gimon and myself an opportunity to see where we are now as a team and to see what is possible. We will be better able to target specific situations in practice over the next few days” she said.

LCVI and FFSS were the two most successful teams of the tournament winning nine and seven games each out of 10 total games.

Results
IEW: 19-25 6-25
LCVI: 9-25 10-25
FFSS: 21-25 15-25
STA: 21-25 15-25
Brock: 13-25 25-18
With files from Sharon Dibblee