VOLLEYBALL - Bay team shines in marathon matches

Bay of Islands College senior girls volleyball team got to mix it with the top teams in the country at the New Zealand Secondary School Championships in Tauranga.
The school team won the Northland Senior Girls Volleyball title to earn a spot in the top 40 at the annual tournament of the country's best prospects.
The girls went in as lowly 33rd seeds and were always going to find it difficult to make the cut for division one (top 16) as they had to finish in the top two in their pool of five teams.
To make things more challenging, Bay College was the bottom seed in their pool with the two top-ranked teams being Tauranga Girls and Hillcrest, with Riccarton and Havelock North making up the numbers.
The opening match of the tournament against the No.2 seeds Tauranga Girls saw Bay College thumped in three sets.
The next match, against Hillcrest turned out to be an absolute cracker. Hillcrest were physically intimidating as they sported four girls over 1.8m tall but this time, Bay College were up for the match and it went to a fifth set tie-breaker.
A large crowd had gathered to see the little school from the north trying to overcome the giants from Waikato but Hillcrest were on the verge of winning the match with match point at 14 -11.
In true Hollywood style, Bay had their own script and turned things up a notch, winning the next 5 points in a row and taking the deciding set 16-14.
With the two toughest matches already over, the second day was expected to be a bit easier with an early match against Riccarton but the Cantabrians proved difficult, prevailing 25-22, 25-21, 25-18 to really make things interesting in the pool. The final match of the pool against Havelock North was close, with Bay prevailing in the fifth set 15- 7.
This put the Bay in a three-way tie for second in the pool but on sets for and against, they were relegated to division two while Hillcrest earned that elusive spot in division one.
The teams were then seeded into pools of four with the top two in each making the quarter-finals.
First match for Bay was against former champions Avondale and this was the second of three brilliant matches Bay played at the tournament. Avondale won the first two sets but Bay came back to win the next three sets to win another marathon match.
The Bay College girls were on a roll and disposed of Church College 3-0 to set up a showdown with Otago Girls for top spot in the pool. Bay College played poorly at times and never seemed to get into the match losing easily 0-3.
Their quarterfinal match was against Wellington champions Naenae College. Playing superb volleyball Bay College won the match 25- 21, 25-23, 25-20 to advance to the semifinals where they once again met Riccarton.
Bay College came out firing but narrowly lost two tights sets and couldn't recover.
For their efforts Bay College earned third equal in division two, which was 19th overall out of 76 girls teams competing at the tournament.
Ruth Prime was the college's outstanding player of the tournament and earned selection in the division two tournament team.
Taking part in National Championships requires six months of fundraising to meet costs to take part.
? The team would like to thank the Lion Foundation, Pub Charity, Oxford Sports Trust, Trillian Trust, ASB Bank Paihia, Canterbury Whangarei, Woolworths Paihia, Noodle and Sushi Bar Paihia for their support and members of the Bay of Islands community for supporting the Volleython fundraiser.
* The team members are: Front (l-r) Ruth Prime, Victoria Davis-Dods, Hayley Tipene (Captain), Rowie Davis-Cooper, Waina Prime. Back (l-r) Katherine Ruwhiu, Grace Cooper, Ebony Cooper, JD Hiko-Nodder.