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Falcons crank up the aggression

Volleyball isn’t for the softhearted.
Foothills Falcon Jessa Meyer spikes over Strathcona-Tweedsmuir Spartan Hadley Rawling Oct. 19 at STS. The Falcons won the Foothills Athletic Council match 3-2.
Foothills Falcon Jessa Meyer spikes over Strathcona-Tweedsmuir Spartan Hadley Rawling Oct. 19 at STS. The Falcons won the Foothills Athletic Council match 3-2.

Volleyball isn’t for the softhearted.

The usually laid-back Corey Cowper, the Foothills Falcons girls volleyball coach, raised his voice a smidge to get his squad to turn things up a notch in their match against the Strathcona-Tweedsmuir Spartans on Oct. 19.

“We weren’t aggressive enough,” Cowper said. “You can’t play that game being that soft, especially when you are playing good teams like STS.

“We were playing STS soft and they hurt us. When we played STS aggressive, we hurt them.”

They didn’t hurt the Spartans too badly as the Falcons needed all five sets to win a seesaw match 3-2 (25-21, 18-25, 26-24, 25-27, 15-5) in the Foothills Athletic Council match at STS.

The Falcons got way behind in the fourth set, and were able to battle back to 24-20, before rattling off four straight to tie the set at 24-24. Despite losing the set, that momentum carried on to the deciding 15-point tiebreaker, according to Falcon outside hitter Jessa Meyer.

“Even when we sided out and they got the point, we never let them get back at us and back in the game,” Meyer said of the final set.

The Spartans won the fourth set when Nicole Shah made a diving hand save on a Falcon spike with STS up 26-25. The Falcons knocked the return out of the court for the Spartan victory.

Shah was arguably the best player on the court that evening and Cowper had to make an adjustment for the fifth set to stop the Spartan hitter.

It worked, said Falcons co-captain Chayle Clark.

“Cowper put Alli Taylor, our best blocker, against her and Alli was able to get the touches to offset her offence,” she said.

Spartans coach Andrea Weber said while disappointed to lose, it’s always good for the smaller 2A STS to play tough teams like Foothills as the Spartans prepare for playoffs.

“We are two evenly-matched teams,” Weber said.

“We have struggled with winning the fifth set, but what I take away from this is we played well in tight matches. To win 27-25 is a big takeaway for us from a 4A school.

“This helps us get better… The girls did a really great job of mixing up our attacks tonight.”

The Spartans went into the match a bit banged up.

Tess NcNaughton and Vicki Bruhjell had a head-on collision during a tournament the week before the match.

Although on the court, Weber said the two Spartan stalwarts were not 100 per cent against Foothills.

STS has continued to improve and gel after team leader Katie Klotz was likely lost for the season with a blown ACL in a match in September.

“She is a Grade 11 player and it created some challenges for us,” Weber said. “We have a really strong JV team this year and we called up Alexandra Kousinioris who has played really well for us.”

Clark said STS is the best team they have played so far in league play.

However, the 5-0 Falcons have yet to face their rivals to the north in league play — the undefeated Holy Trinity Academy Knights in a first-place showdown.

“We play they them next week at home and they are pretty good — they beat us at the U of C tournament (in September),” Clark said.

The Knights, who swept the Highwood Mustangs Oct. 19 in High River, are also 5-0. They take on the Falcons Oct. 26 at 7 p.m.

STS dropped to 2-2 and will host NDC Timberwolves and the Oilfields Drillers in a volleyball doubleheader starting at 5:30 p.m.

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