The Moscrop Panthers high school senior girls’ volleyball team went out winners despite having no provincial title banner to show for it in 2014.
The Panther girls capped a glowing high school career together on the hardcourt with five consecutive BurWest district banners since competing together as Grade 8s, a Lower Mainland runner-up finish in provincial qualifying and sixth place at the B.C. quad A championships in December.
Moscrop just missed a top-four finish, losing a marathon five-set tiebreaker to Handsworth in the quarter-finals, the same team they beat under similar circumstances in the Mainland semifinal.
Senior Ernestine Tiamzon and Grade 11 Isabella Cheung were both singled out as second team all-stars following the provincials.
But more important than all the individual and on-court honours were the ways the girls unselfishly gave back to the sport, said the team’s only coach.
The girls had a long history of volunteering and helping out during their time at Moscrop, including many who had similar success coaching juvenile and junior school volleyball teams to city titles.
“They all gave back to the Moscrop volleyball program,” said Kim Or, who will step away from volunteer coaching at Moscrop after more than a decade. “The whole team put in so much work all year. It made it really, really wonderful. It was a really good ending after all.”
