Churchill claims fifth straight zone volleyball crown
The Sir Winston Bulldogs senior boys volleyball team rolled to its fifth straight Zone 4 AA title Monday with a 3-0 victory (25-13, 25-15 and 25-10) over the visiting Blessed Trinity Thunder.
“The kids were really focused,” Churchill head coach Brent Mergl said. “They were prepared, they played really well and I was happy.
“Sometimes when they know they can beat a team, they don’t give a 100 per cent and they struggle, but I’m glad they were focused today.”
The Bulldogs now head to the Southern Ontario Secondary Schools Association AAA championships Thursday in Ancaster where they will play the second seed from Zone 1.
“Like I said to our coaches, we are right on plan,” Mergl said. “The plan is working perfectly.”
The Bulldogs, who are the reigning Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations AAA silver medalists, received a strong performance from Griffin Whitehorne Monday.
“He came with us to a lot of tournaments last year when he was in Grade 10 and got some exposure to what it’s like at the senior level and how much faster and bigger you have to be,” Mergl said. “He played a little bit at OFSAA because one of our other middles were struggling and he did a decent job.”
That experience carried over into this year.
“He started off strong and he has climbed the ladder tenfold,” Mergl said. “He’s playing like a Grade 12 kid and he’s not playing like a Grade 11 kid should be.
“That extra step is huge for us and he has taken the pressure off the other kids.”
The 16-year-old Whitehorne agrees last year’s taste of senior volleyball has paid big dividends in 2018.
“It helped a lot because there is really no comparison between junior and senior volleyball,” he said. “It’s so much quicker and everyone is so much better and it helped in getting to know where everybody is and where I have to be.”
Unlike many of his Churchill teammates, Whitehorne doesn’t play travel volleyball.
“I’ve been told that I should but I play travel baseball and that takes up a lot of my time,” the 6-foot-5 teen said. “This is more of a side thing to just hang out but I’m doing pretty good so I keep playing. I have fun with the guys because they are a great group.”
He plays third base on a travel baseball team in Burlington and that’s where his priorities lie. But volleyball is great cross training for baseball.
“It helps with agility and speed , I am able to jump a lot higher, it helps me maintain arm strength and it helps me stay in shape and avoid injury.”
Blessed Trinity head coach Mike Weber was impressed with the play of Churchill Monday.
“They are very strong and I wish them luck at SOSSA,” he said. “We have some really good players as well and our plan was to watch their hitters. They are a very strong hitting team and we just didn’t do it consistently”
The Thunder placed third in NCAA league play this season with a 5-2 record.
“We are coming along nicely,” Weber said. “We were a really young team with mainly Grade 11s and a couple Grade 12s.
“Probably what the difference was (today) is they have a lot of the rep players and we don’t have any. It makes a huge difference and we did OK with what we started with.”
