The St. Robert 7th Grade North Shore girls volleyball team kicked off the St. Thomas Aquinas Tournament on September 27. The tournament was held at St. Veronica’s. The girls played a good three games against tough teams. Their first game was against St. Thomas Aquinas. The seventh graders won the first and last games. They were a hard team. The second game was against St. Mary’s.  The girls lost all three games. The third game was against St. Leonard’s. The seventh graders lost all three games.

Skyler Koster, a player, said, “I feel we deserved fourth place we got but, I wish we won.” The seventh graders won fourth place medals. “We were so close to winning, but we fell apart at the end,” she added. This is true, just looking at the record, they won two out of three their first match, then the next two matches, they lost all of their games. They played tough teams. There was really good competition, and the girls learned a lot and improved.

Skyler likes the position she plays because she gets to move around a lot. At the tournament, girls got to play different positions. For example, a lot of girls got to play setter. The offense the North Shore team plays is a two setter offence. The setter decides if she wants to switch places with a player or run in from the out of bounds line. The girls play in the “A” league. That makes the competition difficult.

“The gym at St. Veronica’s had a bad echo, and that made it harder to play,” said an anonymous source. The gym was big and dark. The ceiling were high, which contributed to the echo. “It was really loud. That made it very distracting,” the source added. “I thought it was fun to play against those tough teams. It showed us how we can hold up to a team that is better than us.”

The North Shore League includes Catholic schools like St Robert, Holy Family, and St. Monica. The seventh graders have one tournament left, the St. Dominic’s tournament at Center court.