THUNDER BAY – It took him two decades, but Curtis Michaluk has finally led a Westgate Tigers senior girls’ volleyball team to the provincial championships.
The Tigers, who dug themselves early holes, but rallied back to capture the first two sets, knocked off the visiting Beaver Brae Broncos of Kenora 25-23, 25-22, 21-25, 25-17 on Saturday to claim the NWOSSA championship, a first for the long-time coach who took over the team in 1999.
“It’s not long overdue,” Michaluk said, searching for the right words to describe his emotions.
“We have a tough time with the west. They have such strong programs. It’s a whole team effort and it’s the first time we have a group of kids for that period of time and fortunately we were able to accomplish our goal.”
Power hitter Payton Kooistra, who served up eight straight points in the second set to turn a 15-11 deficit into a 19-15 lead, said it’s the culmination of everything the team’s been working for since this time last year, when the Fort Frances Muskies knocked them off at the regional championship.
And maybe even a little further back than that.
“We’ve been working on this since Grade 9 and it’s just really exciting. Last year we came to NWOSSA and we ended up losing. This year we came back and we won. It’s a big deal,” the 17-year-old Grade 12 student said.
Teammate and Tigers libero Alyssa Aune, a fellow senior, said getting over the top and getting to OFSSAA is an incredible accomplishment.
“This is honestly the best feeling of my life, because we’ve worked for this since Grade 9. We’ve worked our butts off every day in practice. Last year we made it to the NWOSSA championship, but we came in second with a good fight,” the 18-year-old said.
“Now that we finally get to go to OFSSAA, it’s the best feeling in the world.”
Early on, it looked like the Broncos might continue NORWOSSA’s senior girls’ volleyball dominance. They led 11-4 in the opening set, when their setter Midori Hoppe went down with a match-ending knee injury.
After she was helped off the court, the Tigers scored 12 of the next 17 points to tie the game 16-16, then, after going up four, withstood a late Broncos charge to take the opening set by two.
It was more of the same in the second, the Broncos jumping out in front 14-9, only to have Westgate regroup and take a commanding two-set lead.
“We just realized we needed to push harder,” Aune said. “At first we were thinking, we’ve got this, we’ve got this and we weren’t working hard enough. But as soon as we put our minds to it, we started working harder, playing better and making smarter plays.
“And we did what we needed to do.”
Beaver Brae bounced back in the third set, taking a late lead after trailing most of the way, scoring four of the final five points to put it away.
But the Tigers took control of the fourth set, four times going up by four points, and went on to an eight-point win that sealed the best-of-three championship. They swept the Broncos in Friday's opening contets.
Westgate will travel to Mississauga for the OFSSAA championships in early March.
