By Keaton Hills
If you’re out and about in town this weekend, you’ll likely see a bunch of Ontario Championships hoodies as Ottawa welcomes over 500 teams for youth volleyball and basketball provincials.
The sounds of spikes and screams will take over the EY Centre as 152 girls’ volleyball squads compete in the 15-and-under championships from Thursday to Sunday, while 51 more 15U boys’ and 132 6v6 (13U) girls’ teams are entered for their tournaments from Sunday to Tuesday.
Fresh off a fourth-place provincials performance of their own a week earlier, the Maverick Volleyball Club’s 17U girls spent six hours Tuesday helping to transform the EY Centre into a volleyball venue by taping down lines and putting up posts.
The Ottawa Fusion have seven teams entered across the three events, while the 11 Mavs teams can draw inspiration from their clubmates’ strong results from the most recent provincials.
The Maverick Mustangs 18U boys matched the 17U Maverick Gold Rush girls’ fourth-place finish this past weekend in Waterloo, while the Mavs had both their Longhorns and Bulls 16U teams reach the top-tier quarter-final playoff round in the 16U boys’ event from Apr. 14-16.
The Longhorns prevailed in three-setters in four of their eight consecutive victories to reach the championship match before setting for a silver medal with a 21-25, 23-25 defeat to Unity Bushido in the final.
En route, the Longhorns also took down the Bulls in the preliminary round. That’s a matchup that can be seen routinely during training, which helps fuel both teams’ success, highlighted Maverick Volleyball Club president Kerry MacLean.
“I think the fact that they train together and compete against each other and both teams are top-8 calibre just keeps the play at a really high level right in their own practice gym,” MacLean explained. “It’s not too often teams get to do that.”
MacLean explained that having two teams’ worth of standout talent can be sometimes be troublesome with young players as well.
“It’s a challenge getting the boys or girls over the hump of accepting being on a different team, like teams are perceived to be number one and number two, but in this case, the team tagged with the number two actually went into provincial seeded higher than the ones,” he noted.
Seeded just 17th going in, the 17U Gold Rush girls pulled off a big upset of their own when they took down #2 Pakmen in the top-tier quarter-finals en route to their fourth-place finish.
“It’s sort of proof that we knew we had all of the athletes to get it done,” MacLean indicated. “We just wanted to make sure the entire team received equal attention in their development until the playoff.”
The team also benefitted from the big-game experience several of its players gained in helping the Béatrice-Desloges Bulldogs to an OFSAA high school ‘AA’ girls’ volleyball championship victory last month.
“Just to be in a major event with a lot of hoopla and to rise up, to get over that hump and know that you have what it takes to win a major event, I’m pretty sure would have trickled down,” added MacLean.
The best-ranked local teams for the championships in Ottawa are the Maverick Ambush at #8 in the 15U girls’ tournament and a pair of Mavs 15U boys’ teams that are seeded seventh (Chargers) and 10th (Brigade).
MacLean said that he would love to see the Mavs teams finish above their initial ranking, though he acknowledges this can be much more difficult on the girls’ side with many more teams. As a best-case scenario, he would again like to see more than one Mavs boys’ team reach the top-tier quarter-finals.
The provincials in Ottawa, featuring roughly 4,500 athletes and officials, is being held at the EY Centre for the first time. Kitchener-Waterloo was been the traditional host for all volleyball levels at RIM Park.
“Introducing the Ontario Championships to the City of Ottawa for the first time since the inception of the festival-style event, in 2008, fills us with excitement,” Ontario Volleyball Association operations director Alishia Lidums said in a pre-event media release. “This marks a significant milestone as we expand our reach and bring OVA teams to a new experience in a different area of the province. The City of Ottawa offers a fresh perspective and a vibrant energy that we can’t wait to explore.”
Ottawa Tourism, which provides financial support to championship events hosted in the nation’s capital, is pleased to see the economic impact the provincials are providing. OVA teams have booked almost 9,500 hotel rooms for the six days of competition, it noted, and they’ll eat at local restaurants and visit attractions.
“Hosting the Ontario Volleyball Championships in Ottawa brings social, economic, and legacy benefits to our city,” Ottawa Tourism president & CEO Michael Crockatt said in the release. “While these young athletes are modelling an active lifestyle, team spirit and sportsmanship for other aspiring athletes to see, our city will be showcasing all it has to offer to them and their families, coaches, and travel support team during our beautiful spring season.”
Ottawa will also welcome many more volleyball players to town the following weekend for the 14U Canadian Championships from May 3-5 at Carleton University.
Ontario Cup basketball will take over high school gyms
This weekend will be a record-setter for basketball as well, with 167 teams entered in the U14 boys’ Ontario Cup.
The action will be spread out between 20 venues – all high schools, minus the top two divisions hosted at Algonquin College.
The teams are split into 21 levels based on rankings, with a maximum of eight teams per division. The Ontario Championships for the province’s top-8 teams will take place this weekend at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre as well.
The Ottawa Shooting Stars and Ottawa South Bedrock are the top-ranked local teams set to compete, in Division 4.
The Ottawa event will be the biggest Ontario Cup to date, and it will be the biggest basketball tournament ever held in Canada for a single age cohort, the Ottawa Basketball Network said in a media release.
The tournament will also serve as a platform to teach youth transferable job skills, including several who will serve as paid table officials thanks to a Prezdential Basketball initiative.
The event requires hundreds of on-court and off-court officials, event volunteers and organizers from Eastern Ontario Basketball to run the show for over 2,000 players.
“Let’s take something youth love – basketball – and let them do it in deliberate ways that build essential skills and confidence,” Ottawa Basketball Network founder Leo Doyle said in the announcement. “Scaling-up basketball builds community, people, and relationships.
“We’d love for the City of Ottawa to do more to support basketball. If basketball got even 10% of the attention the City gives rink, field, and aquatic sports, we’d be way ahead. An annual basketball tournament, like the ‘Bell Capital Cup’ of hockey, would be a winner.”
The Ottawa Basketball Network, which aims to enable, connect and advocate for the sport locally, will hold its second-annual Ottawa Basketball Summit on June 8 at the University of Ottawa.
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