The Dauphin Clippers senior girls and boys volleyball teams were in Regina for the annual Campbell Invitational Volleyball Tournament, this past weekend.
The girls did not fare well, losing all of their games, but coach Chris Wolfenden said they learned a lot of lessons in the process.
“Just what we need to work on and things to improve on,” he said.
“It was a difficult tournament, It was basically some of the best teams in Saskatchewan were in this tournament. So we were playing against some pretty talented players. But regardless, it’s not like we weren’t competitive. It’s all learning opportunities at the beginning of the season. That’s how I categorize this weekend, was just a good learning experience for the girls.”
The Clippers did improve as the tournament progressed.
“There’s improvement every time. Everybody is learning lessons within little moments of the game. I’d say every one of our girls had successful moments where they were applying something new and they had success with it. Now it’s trying to become more consistent as the season progresses,” he said.
“It’s always a positive, for sure. We spent three days together and built a little team culture. So it’s all a process.”
The next tournament will be in Winnipeg, hosted by Daniel McIntyre Collegiate, Oct. 18 and 19.
Wolfenden said the team will watch a lot of film to self-analyze their play.
“Where we’re standing and how we’re playing systems, general ball control. Things like that,” he said.
“I film most games so we’re doing video sessions a couple times in the next couple of weeks to self-analyze and learn from those videos and moments we’ve already been through.”
The senior boys played nine matches in two-and-a-half days, losing in the consolation final of the 12-team tournament.
Clippers coach Taylor Schmidt said the team played well considering they were playing against some AAAAA schools.
“So we were facing some good competition. We’re still finding our right combinations of players and rotations and we were working it out through the whole tournament. And it came together near the end,” he said.
“We found the right combination, the right rotation and we were playing some of our best volleyball by the end of the tournament.”
From set to set, match to match, Schmidt said the Clippers continued to improve as a team and as individual players.
“In the semifinal versus Centennial, that’s when it all came together. We really clicked. And the final match was a great match against Estevan. It could have went either way. It was some great volleyball,” he said.
The Clippers will now prepare for a tournament, Oct. 19 in Winkler, hosted by Northland Parkway.
In the meantime, the Clippers will continue to work on team play in practice.
“We’ve got a lot of fire power on our team that seems to be clicking real well. So we’re going to start focusing a little bit on defence and team defence and go from there,” Schmidt said.