Burnaby North and Moscrop stood up to the challenge.
The senior boys’ and girls’ regular season champions both swept their way to a BNW banner, winning their respective No. 1 seeding into next week’s Lower Mainland qualifying volleyball tournaments.
The North Vikings played a relatively mistake-free match in the banner final, taking league runner-up Burnaby South Rebels in straight sets 25-12, 25-21, 25-17 at North on Wednesday.
“Today everything clicked together on offence and defence. We just played really great overall,” said North captain and league all-star Brian Shim.
Shim, fellow all-star Caleb Tam, Jasper Quan and Devon Jones provided much of the firepower at the net for North, which flirted with a top-10 provincial ranking earlier in the high school season.
In the final, Jones broke open a tie game early in the first set with a long service to put the Vikings well in charge.
Tied 12-12 in the second set, Tam had a similar strong string of winning serves that put North into the lead for good despite a late South rally.
North had control of the final set.
Both North and South qualified for the Mainlands.
South’s Josh Lovendino and power hitter Stanley Su were also named district all-stars after the match.
Moscrop, a marathon five-set winner over Burnaby Mountain in the consolation final, took on Gladstone on Thursday (after NOWdeadlines) for a wild card seed into the provincial qualifying tournament.
The match for the third district seed was a thriller from the opening set.
Moscrop won the first set in extra ends 29-27, but Mountain broke right back, winning the second set 26-24 in a game where no more than two points separated both teams throughout.
The two well-matched school teams then traded the third and fourth sets by similar 25-23 scores, with Moscrop taking the first game and Mountain forcing a fifth and final tiebreak.
Moscrop won the tiebreaker 15-5 to remain in the hunt for a spot in the Mainlands.
Kevin Giang of Moscrop and Eric Cheng of Mountain were also named to the all-district all-star team.
North’s main competition at the Lower Mainlands will likely come from No. 3- ranked Steveston-London.
“I’d say we have a pretty good chance of even first,” said Shim. “We play pretty decent volleyball.”
The Mainlands will finish up at David Thompson on Nov. 14 and 15. The top four school teams will make it to the AAA B.C. championships in Kelowna later this month.
In the girls’ district final at Moscrop, the host and No. 10-ranked Panthers routed the Vikings 3-0, winning 25-21, 25-16, 25-22.
The victory was the fourth consecutive high school district championship title for the Moscrop girls, who have been together since bantams.
“North started out very strong, matching swing for swing,” said Panthers’ coach Kim Or. “Eventually Moscrop found ways to convert the free balls to kills and stay in system.”
Moscrop will now host the 12-team Lower Mainland Quad A qualifiers that includes North Shore provincial honourable mentions Handsworth, down from No. 3 in the polls, and West Vancouver.
The top three placing teams will earn Lower Mainland berths into the provincial championships in Penticton.
In single A volleyball, Burnaby’s Carver Christian Phoenix is in the top 10 in both boys’ and girls’ rankings.
The Phoenix boys are currently holding steady at No. 3, while the Carver girls’ team dropped a point in recent polling to seventh place overall.
