The Lawrie Hobart Memorial Volleyball Tournament is always one of the first sporting events of the scholastic calendar year, but it meant something different this year.
The tournament in Fort Smith had the distinction of being the opening salvo of the school sports calendar with five communities in total sending teams to compete for the first banners of the season. In addition to Fort Smith, there were teams from Hay River, Yellowknife, Behchoko and Ndilo.
And it would be Paul W. Kaeser High School (PWK) from the host community that would make sure several of them stayed behind as the Huskies captured five of the eight up for grabs: 19U boys, 15U girls and boys, and the Grade 7/8 boys and girls.
Chief Jimmy Bruneau School from Behchoko scored the 19U girls banner by beating Sir John Franklin High School from Yellowknife, while Princess Alexandra School won the Grade 5/6 girls banner and Joseph Burr Tyrrell School of Fort Smith took the Grade 5/6 boys title.
Allie McDonald, the tournament’s organizer and coach of the victorious PWK 15U girls squad, said it wasn’t a shock for the school to win five banners, but not a complete surprise, either.
“Our teams had a very short window to train — we weren’t in school until the last week of September, so about two and a half weeks of practice,” she said.
The 15U and 19U divisions all played best-of-five set finals, while the junior divisions played best-of-three-set deciders. All of the senior title match-ups went the distance, which led to a long Sunday, but that didn’t bother McDonald too much.
“We finished up at around 5 p.m., which wasn’t anticipated, but the energy level was up the entire day and it was an exciting way to finish,” she said.
Seeing community teams win all eight banners was a bonus as well, she added.
“It’s always nice to see the community teams come out on top because we don’t always get access to high-performance sports,” she said. “Seeing our kids win a bunch was a great thing for the school.”
This was the second consecutive year the tournament has been held since the end of the pandemic, but McDonald said there was plenty of nervousness about whether it would happen at all considering all that’s transpired.
“We were worried because of the evacuation and whether that would affect things, but it was a big success,” she said. “We had over 200 athletes playing and that’s always good.”
Here are the official results:
19U Boys
1st - Paul W. Kaeser (PWK, Fort Smith)
2nd - Sir John Franklin (Yellowknife)
3rd - Diamond Jenness Secondary (DJSS, Hay River)
19U Girls
1st - Chief Jimmy Bruneau School (CJBS, Behchoko)
2nd - Sir John Franklin
3rd - PWK
15U Girls
1st - PWK
2nd - CJBS
3rd - DJSS
15U Boys
1st - PWK
2nd - PWK
Grade 7/8 Boys
1st - PWK
2nd - DJSS
3rd - Princess Alexandra (PA, Hay River)
Grade 7/8 Girls
1st - PWK
2nd - DJSS
3rd - PA
Grade 5/6 Boys
1st - PA
2nd - Joseph Burr Tyrrell (JBT, Fort Smith)
Grade 5/6 Girls
1st - JBT
2nd - PA