It might take a big longer for the Foothills Falcons to take flight this year. The Falcons are coming off their strongest 4A senior boys volleyball season in history when they finished sixth at provincials and dominated the Foothills Athletic Council. However, many of those players have left the nest, and new Falcons coach Curt Colfer has a rebuilding year ahead of him as the team aims for the playoffs in November. “My understanding is the team last year graduated eight or nine kids, so we basically have a new team,” Colfer said. “We will be learning a lot this year. We’ve had some kids who stepped up to give us some leadership.” Those include middle Dylan McGeoch, and starting setter, Grade 11 Sam Matsubara. “Sam will play a lot of minutes for us and will be the on-court general for us,” Colfer said. “A very smart, cerebral player. He will be very important for us, especially with some of the big hitters. The Falcons graduated a plethora of big hitters last year with the likes of Matt Greenshields, Quinn Tocheniuk, Eric Meyer and co. Look for the Falcons to flock to the middle at the start of the season. “We will likely focus on the middle attack right now,” Colfer said. “We have a new kid in our program, Jackson Parker. He can swing in the middle pretty well.” “We will see from there.” Colfer expects to have strong defence and passing from the back row. Some of the stronger passers include Grade 10 power Nolan Edwards and libero Angel Diwato. “They are pretty fundamentally sound and they played some pretty high-end club,” Colfer said. “Playing good in the back-court is going to help us.” Colfer admitted the Falcons would suffer some growing pains. “We are going to struggle against strong programs when we go to those tournaments,” Colfer said. “It’s going to be a learning year.” The competitive learning started last weekend as the Falcons finished fourth in their pool and then were knocked out of the first-round of playoffs at the Bev Facey senior volleyball tournament on Sept 14-15 at Sherwood Park. “A lot of the teams we played had already put a weekend in before at the U of A tournament,” Colfer said. “This was our first go-round and I was relatively impressed with the boys. “They communicated well, a super-positive group and they worked hard all weekend.” Foothills was eliminated by St. Peter the Apostle Spartans from Spruce Grove in the opening round of the playoffs. “There was a lot of learning going on, we saw some things we have to do better and some things we do well as a group,” Colfer said. “Now it is just about moving forward.” The Falcons MVP was Matsubara. “He played every set for us,” Colfer said. “A very smart athlete and he kept our group together. We went through some pretty good ups and downs and he did a good job of keeping the guys on track.” The Falcons start defending their Foothills Athletic Council championship when they travel to High River to take on the Highwood Mustangs on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. They are back in High River to play the Notre Dame Collegiate Timberwolves on Sept. 25. The Holy Trinity Academy Knights and Strathcona-Tweedsmuir Spartans start their season on Sept. 25 when they meet at the Knights gym on Sept. 25 at 7 p.m. The Oilfields Drillers don’t start their FAC season until October. However, they are hosting the Drillers Senior Boys Volleyball Classic this weekend in Black Diamond. Girls starting to gel The Foothills Falcons built some cohesiveness in their nest in winning the consolation side of the Senior girls tournament at Bev Facey. “We just got our team together last week,” said Falcons coach Joanne Schoneck. “We lost our first two games, but once we pulled ourselves together we beat the no. 1 team on our side (St. Francis Xavier).” However, the losses put the Falcons on the consolation side where they waltzed to the championship. Consolation lived up to its name as the Falcons got to know one another. “This year we are pretty even, I rotated people evenly,” Schoneck said. “It didn’t matter who I had on the court.” The Falcons have a Grade 11 setter, who improved throughout this tournament. The power is coming from veterans Emileigh Inglis and Gillian Wayne-Nixon, who are returning from last year’s FAC championship squad. The Falcons play their first FAC game Monday when they travel to play Strathmore to take on the Holy Cross Hawks.
