By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle

The Osoyoos Secondary School (OSS) Senior Girls volleyball team begins the first matches of the three-day ‘A’ Provincial Championships today (Dec. 1) in Prince George. 

The OSS Rattlers recently secured one of three spots in competition at the two-day Okanagan Valley championships that sent them to the Provincials.

Paige Kaminski, assistant captain for the Rattlers, said that coming out of the Valley’s knowing they were headed to the Provincials was “so exciting” for the team. But she did confide that, “we’re all pretty nervous to go to provincials!”

She says the team has been studying the competition and “I think our pool is pretty good,” adding it will make for some good matches. 

Head Coach, John Swanson said the Valley’s were “definitely a roller coaster”. “I don’t want to dwell on this, but being a younger team, generally it is a lot about learning and getting the nerves out of the way, experience levels and those kinds of things.”

He observed that it’s easy to criticize the team for not being mentally tough enough and being too emotional “but then on the flip side they pulled through and they played mentally tough volleyball.” 

“So it’s really encouraging and I’m hopeful when we go to the provincials the ladies can go back to those experiences, they’ve had stressful situations, but they got through it – both individually and as a team,” he said.

Swanson noted one of the things they changed is the formations of some of the players. This tweaking was done on the second day of the Valley’s and since then the team has practised to polish up their game play. “I’m very proud of the girls for this. It was fairly seamless with that change of positions,” he said.

The Provincials feature four pools of four. In their first day of competition, the Osoyoos senior girls will compete against Ebenezer Canadian Reformed School from Smithers, St. Ann’s Academy from Kamloops and Lions Gate Christian Academy from North Vancouver. 

The Times Chronicle will carry updates of the Rattlers’ progress  at the championships on timeschronicle.ca.