Knights open with victory in highly competitive TVRA Southeast senior boys volleyball division

College Avenue junior Knight Liam Phanlouvong sets up a first pass in the match against Tillsonburg. (Jeff Tribe Photo)

Jeff Tribe, Echo Correspondent

The Woodstock College Avenue (CASS) Knights senior boys volleyball team winning a regular-season match is not a usual thing.

Nor arguably is a team ‘celebrating’ by committing to a 6:30 a.m. practice the following morning.

“They’re going to come out and put the work in,” credited coach Mike Gryssels following a 3-1 (19-25, 25-21, 25-22, 25-20) Thames Valley Regional Athletics (TVRA) Southeast season-opening victory over the visiting Tillsonburg Gemini Sept. 29 at CASS.

A traditionally slow-starting Knights side saw the Gemini take the opening set, CASS playing point-for-point in its second half, but unable to make up an early deficit. The home side’s height advantage began to tell in the second set, strength at the net both on offence and defence.

“We’re a tallish team,” said CASS middle Nicholas Horinga, who a quick check revealed had grown an inch or two from last season’s 6’8”. “Everyone is on the taller side.”

The Knights’ Owen Procenko closed out the final two set two points, powering home a left side kill for a 24-20 lead and following a miss-hit on a subsequent attempt, finished it off 25-21 on a centre kill.

CASS took the pivotal third set by a narrow two-point margin, a Dierk Beintema block at centre scoring the final point. Tillsonburg opened the fourth set with a quick 4-1 lead, but a Procenko jump service ace and back-line attack helped even the score at six. A Horinga kill and block capped a run to 15-10, and following a brief lapse allowing the Gemini to close from 24-17 to 24-20, CASS’s Greyson Padfield hammered a centre kill just inside the line to his right, finishing off a five-point set and 3-1 match victory.

“Kick-start the season,” said Procenko, adding to the best of his recollection, the match was the first non-exhibition win he can recall since Grade 9, the mark of a team where everyone knows what they’re doing, and is there to compete.

“We feel this is the best team we’ve had in a long time,” said Beintema.

“If we keep playing and know what we’re doing, we could go far,” added Horinga.

A team with a core group of Grade 12 players came into the season with higher expectations, said Gryssels.

“But you need proof,” he said, pleased to open with a win. “It was really good to have a game we could get into, battle and pick each other up.”

The Knights are determined their first win will not also be their last, but nothing will come easily in a highly competitive TVRA Southeast division featuring defending Western Ontario Secondary Schools Athletic Association (WOSSAA) AA champion Woodstock Huron Park and traditional powers Ingersoll DCI and Woodstock CI and St. Mary’s. There will be no free passes to one of the two available WOSSAA berths says Gryssels, even before factoring in TVRA South competition.

“If you’re going, you’ve got to earn it. And that’s the gameplan.”

Junior

The junior Knights came up two points short of a first-set victory against Tillsonburg, finding positives despite a 3-0 (26-24, 25-17, 25-19) defeat.

“We were serving and receiving pretty well,” said CASS’s Sauran Tamang.

He felt the Knights needed to work on their rotation and setting.

“But overall, we were pretty good.”