Momentum Volleyball Club lived up to its name in a big way as the 15U girls from Lloydminster brought Saskatchewan female club volleyball gold to the border city for the first time.
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The provincial-championship performance on the final weekend of April put an exclamation mark on a near-perfect season for Momentum’s 15U girls’ Black team, which has lost just once this year in about 40 matches against Saskatchewan teams.
At the provincials in Saskatoon, the Lloyd juggernaut posted a perfect 6-0 record and didn’t lose a set.
What’s more, a second Momentum entry won Division 1 consolation honours, as the 15U Red club placed seventh among the 15 D1 teams and the 50-team field overall.
“So, we’re the only club in Saskatchewan that has two of their teams inside the top 10,” said Momentum co-founder Cory Gratton, coach of the gold-medallists. “Which is pretty hard to do when you consider you’re competing with Saskatoon and Regina, who have a number of teams.”
On the same banner weekend for Momentum girls, the 16U Black team earned provincial silver for the second straight year and the 16U Red team finished 15th out of 52 clubs.
Earlier in April, the 13U girls from Momentum brought silver medals back to Lloydminster.
On the first weekend of May, the 17U Momentum Black girls’ team placed fifth among 31 teams at their provincials in Saskatoon.
Combined with solid provincial showings from Rustlers boys’ teams, these are heady days for club volleyball in Lloyd. (See an account of the Rustlers’ results in next week’s Meridian Source).
“Last year, there were 25 boys’ and girls’ teams in Lloydminster, which makes us the third-largest exporter of club volleyball teams in Saskatchewan,” Gratton said. “It’s grown a lot.
“There’s also been a lot of good success on the boys’ side, too, recently. We don’t have boys’ teams in our (Momentum) clubs, but within the Rustlers, they’ve medalled at provincials last year and this year and have had good success.”
Gratton speaks from experience. He has coached volleyball teams in Lloyd for 28 years. He and Brent Teasdale founded Momentum in 2020, long after forming the Rustlers’ club program in 2005.
RURAL ATHLETES HELP POWER LLOYD
With both local organizations, Gratton has been impressed with the extra effort that young athletes and their parents show in committing to club volleyball.
As with Gratton’s own 15U team, multiple players from rural communities commit to regularly making long drives to Lloyd for practices and games, and even longer trips elsewhere for tournaments.
“In the last 20 years, there’s only one other team that won provincials that wasn’t from Saskatoon or Regina,” he said. “So, for our group of small-town kids to be able to beat all these (teams from) Saskatoon and Regina, along with Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Winnipeg and then some of the U.S. cities as well, that’s been really gratifying. Being from smaller communities and being successful against large cities.”
His champion 15U team tasted U.S. competition during the February school break, when they won an international tournament in Phoenix, the 88-team
Festival Fiesta Classic.
Back home in the gold-medal match at the recent provincials, Momentum swept the Huskies, the Saskatoon club affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan varsity program.
“I expected our group to be a good team, but I didn’t expect to win so many matches without losing sets,” Gratton said. “To get to provincials and still be able to win all our matches without dropping any sets, in retrospect that was quite surprising. Some of the scores were pretty convincing. When you’re there in the moment, the games seem close and it gets pretty stressful, but when you reflect back on it, it was a pretty dominant performance by the group.”
Those gritty victories came against physically bigger teams from strong Saskatoon and Regina clubs, he said.
Momentum 15U Black’s roster — consisting of three Grade 10 students and seven players from Grade 9 — come from Lloydminster, Kitscoty, Maidstone, Neilburg, Chauvin and Provost.
“It’s certainly helped our club to have these kids that come from outside of Lloydminster and drive an hour and a half or two hours to come to practice, to really make it happen for our club as well,” said Gratton, whose club captured silver at last year’s provincials.
“We’re grateful for the commitment that parents and kids make. When you’re from a small town and you don’t have access to all the opportunities that Saskatoon and Regina and Edmonton teams do, it’s great that they make that commitment and they’re able to be rewarded with the success that we’ve been having.”
That success has come all season long, from three Sask Cup tournaments to the provincial championship itself. In each case, upwards of 40 to 50 teams competed in the 15U division, and the entire Momentum roster contributed to the club’s winning ways.
“At 15U, they have the fair-play rule, which means if you don’t play or start in the first set, you have to in the second,” Gratton said. “So, it really requires everyone on the roster to contribute to the success of the team. We were very fortunate to have different girls step up at different times. When our group was in trouble, there was always a player or two who would have a great game and contribute, get us out of the hole.
“By the final, what was great to see is the fact that everybody had a good game. Everybody played really well and everyone had their moments.”
Momentum girls are banking on more such moments at the national championship in Edmonton during the May long weekend.
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