In an storyline that included strains, planes and automobiles, Nelson’s L.V. Rogers Bombers senior women’s volleyball team captured one of the school’s best finishes in decades at this month’s provincial AAA championships.
Held in Dawson Creek, a land of big trucks and even bigger skies, the Bombers put up an extra large effort to finish seventh out of 15 teams — one of the Bomber’s best seasons since coach Staci Proctor’s days as a player with LVR back in the late ‘80s.
“I’m very proud of the how the girls played, and the resiliency they showed throughout the tournament,” says Proctor.
The Bombers squad made a gruelling 15-hour trip to Dawson Creek that started the morning of the 29th with a school bus ride to Cranbrook. It ended two flights and a one-hour rental car ride along the high-beam lit frigid highway from Dawson to Fort St John, at 1:30 a.m. on the 30th.
Despite the huge haul — and the fact star player Atlyn Proctor was at first uncertain to see action after injuring her ankle a week earlier — LVR went undefeated through Thursday matches against squads from Prince Rupert, Prince George and Saanich.
Buoyed by the play of Grade 12ers Megan Bonikowsky, Robyn Bunyan, Amelia Finlay and Lexi Elias, plus promising Grade 11 Paityn Lake, the Bombers outlasted Vancouver’s Crofton House in an epic two-hour, five-game tilt, almost letting a two-game lead slip away.
Exhausted for their next match up, the 10th ranked Bombers met BC’s number one team in the quarter finals — West Vancouver’s Sentinel Secondary. The Bombers were hobbled by a slew of poor serves, but put up a great fight, losing three games to one.
“I was so proud of the team for taking a set off of them,” says Proctor, “and it just shows that we have the skills to compete at that level and could have knocked them out if we minimized the unforced errors.”
In the fifth/sixth consolation game, the Bombers crash landed against Vancouver Island’s Brentwood College, but bounced back for seventh place with two solid games against PG.
Following an electrifying five-game championship battle between Sentinel and the Vernon Secondary Panthers, won by the West Vancouver powerhouse, L.V. ended the tournament to a big round of applause when they received the Fair Play Award. Atlyn Proctor, currently being scouted by post-secondary teams in Alberta and Kansas, was named a First Team All-Star.
The coach says it was an honour to win the Fair Play nod.
“We know we’re raising good, quality kids in the Kootenays, and that’s a true statement of their character.”
Six players will return for L.V.’s 2024 season. A promising club season featuring many of the Bombers’ current team starts in January.
— Sports correspondent Darren Davidson