Down two sets in the championship final wasn’t anything the Langley Saints hadn’t seen before.
The Saints were trailing to the GW Graham Grizzlies in the Fraser Valley senior girls AAA volleyball championship final on Friday at Elgin Park Secondary.
But rather than panic, Saints coach Dave MacLeod simply told his team to think back to last year.
It was the 2016 Fraser Valley championship game and the Saints found themselves down 0-2. Even the opponent was the same. And just like last year, the Langley squad came roaring back to capture the Fraser Valley banner.
“I told them we have been here before and we knew can pull this off,” MacLeod said. “We know we have the right girls on this team and we don’t quit.
“And that is what we did. we went out there and battled really hard.”
The Saints has lost the first two sets 25-17 and 25-18 and fell behind early in the third set.
But the team found its game, rallied to win the third set 25-21 and then took the fourth set by the same score. They edged the Grizzlies 15-13 in the decisive fifth set to win the Valley banner.
The match went for more than 2.5 hours.
Last year was the first Fraser Valley banner in the history of the LSS senior girls program and the Saints returned all seven starters from that squad.
And just like 2016, Kalyn Hartmann — who recently signed her national letter of intent to join the SFU Clan in the fall — was once again named the most valuable player at the Fraser Valley championships.
Hartmann, who plays right-side hitter for the Saints but excels at multiple positions, was joined on the all-star team by the team’s setter Mia Johnson and Savannah Faulkner, the team’s libero.
The Saints were seeded third for the Fraser Valley championships after a 5-2 regular season.
They upset the No. 2 Elgin Park Orcas 3-0 in the first game before the Grizzlies won 3-0 in the next game. The win advanced Graham straight to the championship final while the Saints faced the Orcas to see who would oppose the Grizzlies in the gold medal game.
The teams traded the first two sets with Langley winning 25-23 and Elgin Park prevailing 29-27 in set two. But the Saints edged the Orcas 25-23 in the third set and then took the match with a 25-15 win in set four.
The Saints and Grizzlies now prepare for the B.C. AAA senior girls provincial championships, which run Nov. 29 to Dec. 2 at Vancouver’s Crofton House School.
MacLeod said the team’s goal at the start of the year was to repeat as Fraser Valley champions and improve on last year’s 13th-place finish at the provincial championships.
The DW Poppy Redhawks were also competing at the Fraser Valleys, but saw their season end with straight-set losses to Graham and Elgin Park.
