Howard Tsumura
Special to the Langley Advance
The Langley Christian Lightning took a few jolts of adversity in the days leading up to the B.C. senior boys double-A volleyball championships.
“But we had started talking together on the very first day of our season that we had 90 days to achieve, to focus on the process every day,” Lightning head coach Carol Hofer said, reflecting back to the mantra that carried her team past Prince George’s College Heights Cougars 3-1 in Saturday’s provincial championship final match at the LEC.
Just six days before the championship tournament was set to begin its four-day run, starting libero Brandon Visscher dislocated his shoulder while jumping into a swimming pool and was lost for the tournament.
“The boys really wanted to play for him,” said Hofer, whose team then lost starting setter Caleb Schnitzer to an injury for its semifinal game, getting great play from backup Jeremiah Macadam before Schnitzer returned for the final. “But we had played some of our best volleyball this season at the Fraser Valley championships, so we knew the entire team had built some great momentum.”
The Lightning weren’t perfect to start.
Having never faced College Heights this season, they dropped the first set but then gutted out a pair of nail-biters before winning it all in the fourth.
Grade 11 left side Brodie Hofer, the coach’s son and recent commit to U Sports’ No. 1 Trinity Western University, was named the most outstanding player while senior left side Reid Marriott was named a first team all-star.
- Howard Tsumura is a reporter for the Vancouver Province
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