The Desert Sands Senior Rams girls’ volleyball team concluded their season on November 10, going down to defeat against the Barriere Cougars in the zone finals. They found themselves facing Barriere for the wild-card spot after being defeated earlier in the finals by St. Ann’s; a team that assistant coach Max Beckett said the Rams had defeated several times during the regular season.
The loss to Barriere was a closely-fought match, with Barriere winning the first set and Ashcroft coming back to win the second. The final set was, says Beckett, an incredibly exciting game. “It was filled with minute-long rallies, and could have gone either way. We needed a couple of inches here and there, and just couldn’t keep the momentum [from the second set] going.”
Four players—Maryn William, Kyla Horsting-Minnabarriet, Keya Belin, and Anni Tyler-Briggs—will all be graduating before next season, so this marks the end of five years of volleyball for the players. The team will return eight players next year.
Beckett notes that the players devotes hours and hours of time to the sport. “It’s a 34 game season over two months, with thousands of kilometres of travel and practice time as well. It’s a really big commitment, as many of the players have a heavy academic load as well.
“Coach Stacey DeBoer did a tremendous job with the team. The Rams proved this year that they can compete with every team in the zone.”