The Lightning senior boys brought back the Provincial Championship banner for the first time since 2017 after finishing as the silver medalist at the last two AA provincial tournaments in 2021 and 2019. The LCS senior girls also put in a strong showing finishing fifth overall in a very tough competitive field. With a silver medal at junior boys and a strong fifth place finish at junior girls, 2022 was a very successful volleyball season for our program.
Senior Girls Finish Fifth in the Province
These girls also had a great time being pushed beyond the court. I love that they dove deep into devotions led by team members every night as they became vulnerable while encouraging each other.
JON KUEHL – ATHLETIC DIRECTOR AnD TEAM PARENT
The senior girls volleyball team went into the Provincials ranked 9th. They finished in second place in the Eastern Valley championships after a close 5-set loss to Langley Fundamental. The girls felt like they had something to prove to themselves to end the season. They battled hard at the provincial tournament in Merritt and won all their matches with the exception of the quarter final match up.
After winning their final two matches, the LCS senior girls finished strong and secured 5th place in the province. They bonded over the matches they played but grew together through times of challenges.Enthusiasm for our Lightning athletes may have even cost us a noise violation in the hotel as cheering was boisterous and excitement was high when they were watching the boys play online. The girls played the entire tournament with a spirit of resilience as these girls never gave up no matter what the battle, score or challenge they were given. It was great to have an amazing group of athletes and coaches who pushed each other to be better on and off the court.
The 2022 senior girls were coached by Lisa Bontkes , Mary Joan Visscher and Kara Davis. Mrs. Davis could not attend the tournament because she was giving birth to her new baby girl, Pippen Mae.
Boys Are Provincial Champions
The LCS boys finally ended a streak of consecutive second place finishes going back to 2019. Coming into last week’s final, the Lightning senior boys had competed in three straight gold medal matches (2019, 2021, 2022), last year losing a heart-breaking final to Duchess Park. This year they met Duchess in the semi-final and won a 3-0 victory.
Our rallying cry at Provincials was “Let’s do difficult things”, and that was a culmination of our season. We knew that if we could do difficult things on and off the floor all year that by the end of the season we would have the capacity to continue to do so. Going through early season losses as we continued to find ourselves and identity, focusing on what was important in each moment, being able to have difficult conversations and build relationships so there was trust and understanding by the end of the season. Then being able to bring each of those banners home in arguably the most difficult tournaments in their own right, showed that we were capable of difficult things on court. I’m incredibly proud of this group of strong young men, who I have no doubt will go out and continue to do difficult things in the world.
BRYNDEN MCTAVISH – HEAD COACH
The final game was a back and forth test with LCS winning the first 2 sets and MEI climbing back in to take sets 3 and 4. The fifth set matched the high intensity of the first 4 sets. The Lightning would be up a few points only to have the Eagles to fight back. The final championship point was typical of the contributions throughout the tournament. Zach Hofer’s bullet serve was returned with a free ball, Elijah Lindberg passed to Willem Van Huizen, put on a platter for Anthony Muller, who would swing one final time on match point winning the Provincial Championship and one more banner to finish off a record-breaking season in which the senior boys won four major tournaments.
Our team has good leadership and good character guys which made the entire season fun and we as coaches saw some great improvement in all the guys. We played in some great tournaments this year that contributed to a strong finish of the season. Our parent group that supported us all year was a huge bonus.
ERIC VAN HUIZEN – ASSISTANT COACH
- Tournament MVP: Willem Van Huizen
- 1st Team All star: Zach Hofer
- 2nd Team All star: Anthony Muller
- Most Outstanding Libero: Elijah Lindberg
