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There's a buzz in and around the Ste. Anne Collegiate as many of the athletic programs are already under way or will soon be, and Athletic Director Kyle Hiebert is beyond excited.
Volleyball
One of the most popular spots at the school is volleyball, and Hiebert is thrilled with the numbers, and how the programs are shaping up. "There's a great buzz around our building right now," he says with a big smile. "We just finished our tryouts recently, and we're going to be fielding all four teams in each of the categories. So, JV girls, JV boys, varsity girls, and varsity boys. We've had good numbers at all of our tryouts, and it was a grueling and tough sit down with the coaches and myself as we kind of ironed out our teams. Had to make a lot of tough decisions there. Unfortunately, some of those kids are not going to be able to play this year, but that's the nature of the beast, especially in a bigger school."
Growth yearly is important, but what stands out to Hiebert is how many kids are staying in the program year-to-year. "Most of these kids, they're looking for any and every opportunity to get into the gym and play some volleyball. We run, aside from our team, we run a lunch program, as well. It's an intermural program where they can make their own teams with their friends, and we run a house league over the lunch hour. In addition to that, once a week we have what we call 'Open Gym', where we have volleyball setup and anyone that wants to come spend their lunch hour can come play volleyball. We try to enforce an inclusive environment, and it gives a chance for kids, even some kids that came out and didn't make a team out of tryouts, they can still play."
Cross Country
"We've struggled the last couple of years to convince these athletes to run," Hiebert explains. "For whatever reason, volleyball is more appealing for a lot of kids. But, we do have a lot of great runners at this school. The tricky thing with cross country is that it's a short season. We have to get into our training right away, and if they're varsity boys, that means they're training for 5K race. At times, we find it difficult to get the necessary training in that we need to they can compete at the Zone Championships in the beginning of October. We'll have a select number of runners, and they've started training on their own, kind of bolstering themselves and building up to that distance that they need to hit."
Basketball
"I think historically at Ste. Anne Collegiate, basketball has been the sport of choice," Hiebert says proudly. "It's the sport where our school sees the most success. It's been that way since I've been here, which is 15 years now. We should have quite a good team, especially in our varsity boys category, we have a lot of returning players. We have a huge grade nine boys group, they are very interested in basketball, so we should have good numbers for JV boys. Our varsity girls team, we just graduated ten players this past spring from the team last year, so we're in a rebuilding faze. We have a few returning, and hopefully they can take more of a leadership role, and hopefully we can get more, but we're kind of rebuilding there, so I'm not sure what to expect."
Curling
Ste. Anne Colligate over the past couple of years has been represented on the curling ice thanks to a local team. "Curling, we're going into the third season of curling, and we didn't have a curling team before that. The story goes, I had a very keen grade nine come in a couple of years ago, he was very, very into curling. He played kind of in the community, played a lot, and he asked me what it would take to get a school curling team going. We recruited a few kids who had a little bit of prior knowledge to curling, booked some time at the local rink, and got it running. This group of four have been together now, it'll be their third season. They have been very competitive at the Zone Championships, they've come in as finalists the last two years, but we're hoping to reach a break through this year."
School pride
No matter the sport, the student-athletes have a lot of school pride, and Hiebert knows it's special when they can represent Ste. Anne Collegiate at whichever even they're a part of. "I think it starts from the top and works it way down. The schools administration has always been supportive of our athletics here. Of course, I'm passionate about it, as is the rest of the physed department, the other teachers are very supportive, we have a great core of coaches across all the sports, so I think it all starts there. The students feed off the excitement of the adults and the feeling in the building. They mentor the younger kids who are coming in not really knowing how it is. We've built a really good culture here in Ste. Anne, and we've just built on that over the last couple of years."