Auroras earn wildcard spot at ASAA 1A provincials

Submitted by Carolyn Siemens

On Thursday, November 7 we had a Zone play in a game to see if we would qualify for the tournament. We were ranked fourth going into Zones so we played the twelfth ranked Livingstone team. We hosted them and won in three sets. It was a great game for the team as we were able to get all our athletes on the court to contribute to the win.

ASAA 1 A Zones tournament was hosted by Coaldale Christian School and we were in a pool with Taber Christian High School, Senator Gershaw from Bow Island, and Stirling. We ended up in second place in the pool beating Taber Christian and Gershaw and taking a loss against Stirling. Our grade twelves showed strong play throughout the pool play with great passing, serving and hitting. Kennedy Planger had a game high with eleven kills in our match against TCHS.

In the playoffs we had a quarter final match against Coalhurst. The girls were up in the first set, but let it slip away from us and lost. They went on to win the next two sets 25-11 and 16-14 to win the match. Planger led with eight kills and McKenzie Siemens had eight aces. In the semi final we played Vauxhall, who is ranked first in the province and undefeated this season. We lost the match to them, but we left the court happy. The girls had a good game against them. We had one of our best passing games, the girls had some great blocks against their big hitters and they had some great defensive plays.

The loss put us in the bronze medal game against Picture Butte. The first set we came out strong and Picture Butte struggled we took the win 25-7. Heading into the second set we knew they would come out strong against us and for the most part we had a good game but struggled with our serve, missing five in the set. We ended up taking a loss 18-25. The third set saw Butte again come out strong and we were down 2-8, which is tough in the third set, but our girls showed resiliency and worked hard to get back into the match. Tessa Langlands served us back into 9-8 and she also made a key defensive dig for us. We ended up winning the bronze medal 15-11. Planger again had a great game offensively with 10 kills, Logan Meier added 5 and four aces, Siemens had 5 aces and Jayna Grimson three blocks.

We got exciting news on Sunday that we also earned a wildcard spot into ASAA 1A Provincials in Bonneyville. There will be three teams from the south in the tournament which speaks to the strength of our zone. We are excited to get a chance to compete in Provincials this upcoming weekend.