The Highway 39 Rivalry between Estevan and Weyburn was alive and well last night, as the ECS Elecs and the WCS Eagles fought hard in the first round of the Co-Op Challenge Series. Estevan's senior boys and girls volleyball teams dominated their Weyburn opponents and swept each of their best-of-five sets.
"I thought we played very, very well," said Hunter Perkins, the Elecs head coach for the girls team. "Our players showed up. It's a big crowd and they were a little nervous to start with, but we settled in and we did very well."
Very well is an understatement. The girls posted 25-23, 25-14, and 25-20 finals against the Eagles. Weyburn kept the game fairly close in each set, creating a wall in front of the net for the majority of the short plays Estevan were throwing their way. The Elecs' strong suit on the court was returning the powerful spikes that the Eagles sent their way. Defence was strong on both sides, but so were serving mistakes, which the Elecs took advantage of in their second set. "We gotta be able to serve them tough and we have to kill the ball. We did a really good job of that tonight, swinging hard, getting some kills and then serving them tough," Perkins added.
The Elecs' boys were a dominant force on the court, returning the majority of the strong spikes sent to them by Weyburn. They kept the scoring gap fairly wide with 25-18, 25-19, and 25-15 finals respectively. "The boys played really well. I think that we still have more in us going into Weyburn in two weeks here. They passed well. They did a really good job at our system, and I think that we'll build as we go forward for these next couple of weeks, and hopefully we can be even better in Weyburn," shared Bryton Such, the head coach for the boys team.
Similar to the girls' team, Such pointed out that the team need to work on their serves. "I think that any team that serves well and pass as well is the team that's going to win. So, we need to clean up our service pressure a little bit and we need to do a better job on our first contact of serve/received."
Both the boys and the girls team now have a target on their back heading into the latter half of the Co-op Challenge Series. Their next matchup is set for October 23 at the Weyburn Comprehensive School.