Western Bay schools win BOP volleyball champs

TOTAL FOCUS: Otumoetai's Sheyla Holloway receives a serve in the final against Mount Maunganui College on Sunday. PHOTO: GEORGE NOVAK

Mount Maunganui College and Otumoetai College made it a Western Bay clean-sweep as the TECT BOP Junior Secondary Schools Volleyball Championships came to an exciting end at ASB Arena on Sunday.

In the boys' division, both semifinals were epic battles going to overtime in the third set.

Mount Maunganui took the points when needed to beat Western Heights from Rotorua 2-1 while Tauranga Boys' College and Otumoetai College played out a tense match in the other semi.

Tauranga Boys' got off to a great start before Otumoetai came back hard to force the game to a deciding third set that could have gone either way. In the end, Tauranga Boys' took the crucial points to win 18-16 in the deciding set.

"The final was anybody's guess but it was Mount College who reacted better to the pressure of a final and took it out two sets to nil, 25-20, 25-16, to be the BOP Junior Secondary School champs," Volleyball Bay of Plenty administrator, Haydon Wright, said.

The girls' semifinals saw Mount Maunganui College squaring off against Trident College from Whakatane, with the Mount girls easily taking the win.

It was a much tighter battle in the other semi between local rivals Tauranga Girls' College and Otumoetai College. Tauranga Girls' needed to play at their best but just could not get past Otumoetai who always looked in control.

So the stage was set for the final between two top qualifiers Mount Maunganui and Otumoetai which did not disappoint.

"While Oates thought it was all easy going in the first set to win 25-15, Mount corrected their mistakes from that and came back to take the second set 25-19," Wright said.

"It was a tense third set with the crowd getting treated to some great attack and defence with both teams digging deep to keep their respective teams in the game. In the end it was Oates who took the game by winning 15-12 in the third set."

The finals were the culmination of three successive weeks of pool play featuring schools from throughout the wider bay of Plenty.

Hopes are high in Bay of Plenty volleyball that one of their teams can take out the VNZ North Island Junior Championships to be held later this month in Wellington.

Full results: Click HERE