THUNDER BAY – The St. Ignatius Falcons are headed to the OFSAA senior girls’ volleyball championship.
The Falcons, who dropped three straight sets earlier in the day in Game 2 of their best-of-three final against the visiting Fort Frances Muskies, then were nudged 25-21 in the Game 3 opener, rallied to capture three straight sets to claim the series victory.
Seventeen-year-old Maia Peterson said the Muskies made them work for every point, but it was worth every ounce of sweat to land the Falcons at provincials next month in Syndenham, Ont.
What a way to round out her high school career, she said.
“It means so much. We’ve been working toward this all year. This team is great. We really wanted this really bad, we put everything into it and I’m really proud of them all.”
Coming on the heels of the five-set loss hours earlier in Game 2, Peterson said she and her teammates took what they learned, made some adjustments and found the will to win.
“We kind of just thought back to the last game, how we came out with the first set and we still lost. It’s not like the first set is the whole game. There are five sets, max,” Peterson said.
“We really just tapped into that and pushed to get the next three.”
Teammate Kathryn Scoifch, the Falcons libero, said going up a against a Fort Frances team that lost last year’s NWOSSAA final, and won the last championship before that, in 2022, before COVID-19 interrupted high school sports, they probably weren’t expected to win.
But they got the job done, she said.
“I think for sure we were the underdogs going into this and I’m really proud of the girls because we do have a hard time keeping our energy up. We were all cooked. We’d played three games and have gone to school every day. It’s just been a jam-packed week and we only had a day to practice for this,” Scofich said.
“We just pushed. We wanted this so bad and we didn’t want our trip to end here. We wanted to go all the way to OFSSA, especially since it’s my senior year.”
As was the case in the first two games of the series, the opening set was a back-and-forth affair. The Muskies jumped in front 8-5, but after the Falcons scored three straight to even things up, neither team led by more than two until Fort Frances pulled ahead 20-17. They went on to win the opening set 25-21.
St. Ignatius took control of the second set, leading 17-8 at one point, buoyed by Peterson’s strong service game.
With her at the helm, the Falcons rolled off seven straight points.
Fort Frances setter Grace Horton wasn’t ready to give the set away and served up four straight points of her own, allowing the Muskies to climb to within one, down 18-17. But St. Ignatius pulled away late and evened the match with a 25-21 win.
The third set was a nailbiter, plagued by serving troubles on both sides of the net, but it was the Falcons that prevailed, erasing a 21-20 Fort Frances lead to escape with a 25-23 triumph, putting them once again within a set of a series win.
This time they didn’t give in.
Backed by the strong service game of Abby Clowes and Olivia Cupp, they raced out to a 21-10 lead. The Muskies Edna Bodnarchuk kept Fort Frances’ hopes alive, leading the Muskies on a 6-0 run and to within four, but a kill by Clowes ended the streak and Peterson served it out for the championship.
OFSAA is scheduled to begin on March 6.
Notes: The Westgate Tigers boys basketball team completed a sweep of Sioux North in their NWOSSAA final, winning Game 2 62-44. They won Game 1 53-40 and will head to Nepean for the OFSAA 'AA' boys' basketball championship, starting on March. 4.
