HIGH ACHIEVERS: West Carleton strives for boys’ AAA volleyball success as school stages its first-ever OFSAA championship

By Martin Cleary

One year ago, West Carleton Secondary School athletic director Courtney Beaulne wrote a cheque for the boys’ senior volleyball team to enter the OFSAA AAA championship in Kingston.

When she put her pen down, she said to herself: That’s enough of that. We’re going to save money next year.

Beaulne followed through on that promise to herself.

Not only did the West Carleton Wolves win the National Capital Secondary School Athletic Association boys’ AAA volleyball championship, but also Beaulne won’t have to write a cheque to cover entry fees for this year’s OFSAA championship.

Instead of travelling to another part of Ontario for the provincial high school finals, the OFSAA championship will be staged in Dunrobin for the first time ever for any sport and West Carleton is receiving plenty of help from its surrounding communities.

After noticing there was no host school for the 2025 OFSAA boys’ volleyball championship and talking to her staff about taking a shot at it, Beaulne submitted a bid last February to play host to the provincial high school championship.

West Carleton was one of three schools in the bidding process and emerged the winner because of its strong overall presentation package. Despite never having staged any OFSAA championship in the past, West Carleton stressed there would be strong community involvement, produced a logo reflective of the area and spoke highly of the energy behind the project.

“Everyone’s excited about the OFSAA experience coming up,” said Mark Elliott, the West Carleton Wolves boys’ volleyball head coach. “We will hopefully have lots of our student body in attendance at the games, making noise and having a great time.”

The 20-school OFSAA boys’ AAA volleyball championship, which is for schools with populations of more than 900 students, will be held over three days from Thursday, Nov. 20 through Saturday, Nov. 22.

West Carleton, which has a school population of more than 1,300 students, will serve as the headquarters for the OFSAA boys’ AAA championship. The school will be the site of round-robin games and the quarterfinals for the first two days and will play host to semifinal games and the medal matches on the third day.

Earl of March Secondary School and All Saints High School will open their gymnasiums for games on the first two days, and Jack Donohue Public School will be a first-day-only venue. All three schools are in Kanata.

“At first, this was great,” Beaulne said about having an OFSAA championship touch down in Dunrobin, a small rural community in the western part of Ottawa. “As an athletic director, it’s super busy. But I look forward to this event.”

Besides being a girls’ phys-ed teacher, the head of health and physical education and the athletic director at West Carleton, Beaulne is the NCSSAA representative on the OFSAA committee for girls’ activities, a member of the OFSAA championship review committee and the OFSAA soccer advisory committee as well as the NCSSAA girls’ soccer convenor.

She is no stranger, however, to OFSAA championships as she has played various roles in more than a dozen provincial high school championships that have been staged in Ottawa in recent years.

Throughout the whole process of staging West Carleton’s inaugural OFSAA championship Beaulne has had immense help from her peers and the students, who rely on the yellow school buses to get to and from school.

The main West Carleton organizing committee has 12 members and each of the other three schools have host committees. Retired teachers Martha Ashfield and Cheryl Hyndman have volunteered for the community’s big moment in the OFSAA spotlight and Kendra Read is taking a break from her sabbatical and world travels to help out.

NCSSAA athletic co-ordinators Ginette Godmaire and Joel Graham also will be providing behind the scenes assistance along with OFSAA officials, Baden (the official volleyball supplier for the championship), Canuckstuff (the official retailer), Baron (the exclusive ring sponsor), the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association, the Canadian Armed Forces, InnVest Hotels and Farm Boy, which is the official sponsor for the championship banquet in the West Carleton gymnasium.

Immediately after the sixth round of games on the opening day at West Carleton, the gymnasium will be transformed into a dining hall for about 400 student-athletes, coaches and officials.

Students also play a major role to keeping the championship energized and running on a smooth course.

A 12-foot high Adirondack chair will be a focal point of the championship. It was built by students in the tech class. Students in the food program are preparing meals for the volunteers.

More than 60 students are volunteering at West Carleton and Jack Donohue for scorekeeping, line officiating, ball handling, greeting, serving as team ambassadors, selling tickets and presenting the banquet.

“It’s all-hands-on-deck,” Beaulne added in an email. “Most of these students are other volleyball players, phys-ed students or our leadership students.”

The 55 round-robin and championship/consolation playoff games will be officiated almost exclusively by Ottawa and area referees. There will only be one out-of-town referee for the OFSAA championship.

The pool games start at 9 a.m. on Nov. 20 and 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 21 with the quarterfinals at 5:30 p.m. (consolation round) and 7:30 p.m. (championship round). The semifinals are set for Nov. 22 at 9 a.m. (consolation) and 11 a.m. (championship) at West Carleton and Earl of March. The final three matches are scheduled for West Carleton – consolation final, 1 p.m; bronze-medal match, 3 p.m.; and the gold-medal match, 5 p.m. The medal matches will follow a best-of-five format.

Tickets are $10 for a day or $20 for a full championship pass.

By Saturday night, all 20 schools will have registered for the OFSAA championship and the organizing committee will seed each team one through 20. There will be four pools with five schools in each one for the preliminary round.

After reaching the 2024 OFSAA boys’ AAA quarterfinals in Kingston, West Carleton is confident of challenging for a medal.

West Carleton has had an exceptional season this fall. The Wolves won the NCSSAA West 1 title with a 6-0 record, winning 18 sets and losing only three. In the overlap games, West Carleton went 2-0 and swept through the Diamond Division playoffs without losing a set – defeating Gisèle-Lalonde 3-0 in the quarterfinals, Franco-Cité 3-0 in the semifinals and Louis-Riel 3-0 (25-22, 25-23, 26-24) in the city final.

It was the first time West Carleton, which has an overall league record of 11-0 this season, had won an NCSSAA senior boys’ volleyball championship. West Carleton won the junior boys’ tier 2 title in 2002.

Riel, the 2025 OFSAA AA champion, also advanced to the provincial boys’ AAA volleyball championship as the second NCSSAA representative, after it defeated Franco-Cité 3-0 in a play-in game. The Rebelles will enter OFSAA with an overall league record of 9-3.

“We have a stellar group of Grade 12s this year,” Elliott told the Ottawa Sports Pages’ Dan Plouffe, noting they provided a big part of the inspiration to bid to play host to OFSAA. “We knew we’d have a good chance of being back at OFSAA.

“We were in Kingston last year and we played against Kingston in the quarterfinals. We saw the energy in the gym and we got a little bit jealous. We wanted to have it ourselves, so in (a week) we’ll get to feel that energy.”

The Wolves’ lineup features a trio of decorated senior players from the Maverick club volleyball program – captain Lukas Weyand, Grayson Comeau and Fisher Cation.

Weyand was a member of the Maverick Marshalls boys’ 17U team, which won the gold medal at the United States nationals. Comeau and Cation were Ontario boys’ 17U silver medallists with their Maverick Rangers team. Cation and Weyand have been teammates and friends for five years.

Read More: History-making Maverick Marshalls storm USA Volleyball Nationals, strike gold

“It’s awesome (being a city champion). I love the feeling,” said Cation, who fired an ace to win both the NCSSAA final and semifinal. “I love my team. Our setter, our captain, we’re best friends, but we get along great with everyone. We’re really excited for OFSAA now.”

Elliott has been coaching at West Carleton for about 10 years and he hopes the program can continue to grow and have success.

“They came in Grade 9, having played some club ball,” he noted. “We just kind of rolled with that and through their enthusiasm for the game, we were able to draw in some other players in the school, develop them over the last three or four years and it has turned into what we have today.”

– with files from Dan Plouffe

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