Chatham’s New Kings Of The Court Hoping For OFSAA
Aiden Anjema swings for the UCC Lancers in the LKSSAA final win over CKSS – Photo by Kathy Kearns
The Lancers’ win haulted a 17-year run of the CKSS Golden Hawks senior boys volleyball team advancing to OFSAA.
“The Lancers are proud to have won the LKSSAA championship as it has been on our radar since September,” said UCC Lancers head coach Jeff Denomy.
“Although we have handled CKSS most of the year we were aware they have been improving every week and it forced us to focus and improve ourselves. We have won 4 of the last 9 Kent/LKSSAA titles so winning is not necessarily new to UCC Senior Boys Volleyball but with the elimination of AAAA the last 3 years the game has gained importance. The Lancers have played very well lately winning our last three tournaments.”
UCC defeated CKSS 25-17, 25-23, 20-25, and 25-16.
Now, UCC eyes a SWOSSAA final against St. Anne’s Thursday in Lakeshore, with the winner advancing to OFSAA November 23-25 in Kitchener-Waterloo.
“St Anne’s has a strong team as they have gone undefeated in Windsor,” explained Denomy. “They have two strong hitters that we will have to focus on. Our goal is to maintain a balanced attack using the many options we have. Aidan Anjema, Rylan Burm, Dylan McGregor, and Cal O’Hara all had many attacks against CKSS and that will have to continue. We will also rely on a veteran backcourt of Finn O’Brien and Dylan Buchanan to pass serve and provide solid defense.”
A Lancers win would be their first trip to OFSAA since 2013, when they were classified as a ‘AAAA’ school. Although Denomy says his team is still young, he expects their big game experience to pay off Thursday.
“We are not a young team and we have played in a few finals lately that were very intense. Our travels around the province and big game experience will have to pay off in the loud St Anne’s gym for us to be successful.”
Good day;
With all respect I like to point out the above statement, “The Lancers’ win haulted a 17-year run of the CKSS Golden Hawks senior boys volleyball team advancing to OFSAA.” is misleading.
The Lancers were never able to stop the CK Hawks advancing to OFSAA until 3 years ago when AAAA rating was eliminated. Until that time UCC competed at the 4A level, CK at the 3A level, therefore each team could advance to their own OFSAA. Now both teams compete at the same level.
Thank you for putting this website together, sport is important;
Rob Hakker
Rob, you are definitely correct, and in some recent years, UCC has defeated CKSS as a AAAA school against AAA in the Kent final.
The point stands that UCC’s performance broke a rather incredible streak from a volleyball powerhouse, and is therefore incredibly relevant.
It does state in the article about UCC’s previous ‘AAAA’ classification, and that they themselves qualified for OFSAA in 2013.