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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Thursday, November 13, 2014 | 54 OT an unlikely senior volleyball champion The Oakville Trafalgar Red Devils followed a familiar storyline in Monday's Halton high school senior boys' volleyball Tier 1 final: start slowly, then finish strong. OT won the first two sets of the best-of-five championship match at Sheridan College in narrow fashion (26-24, 25-22) before finishing off the St. Thomas Aquinas Raiders with a decisive 25-9 victory in the third. "My guys can sometimes take a while to settle in. They like to play it tight," said Red Devils coach Wendy Malloch. "In the third set, they really hit their stride." OT also took some time to build momentum during its season. The Red Devils were 3-3 through six games, but then rattled off 13 straight victories (including a recent tournament) and lost just one set in their three playoff matches. Malloch can't explain her team's slow starts to games, but she can pinpoint why OT had a mediocre start to the season. "They didn't have a coach. The team almost didn't happen. I got recruited at the 11th hour to be a body in the room," said Malloch, a teacher who Kenni Dobson of the Oakville Trafalgar Red Devils senior boys' volleyball team (left) tries to hit over the had never coached a team before. block of two St. Thomas Aquinas players during Monday's Halton Tier 1 final at Sheridan College. Midway through the campaign, the Red Devils | photo by Justin Greaves -- Special to the Beaver were able to recruit Nick Chia to serve as an outside coach. "He had a lot of raw material to work with," Malloch said of the OT team, which features just three players with rep experience -- Kenni Dobson, Malcolm Prentice and Cole Buck -- but has a group of all-around athletes. "Nick has done a really nice job." The Red Devils managed to go from a team that almost folded -- "The boys were the ones sitting down in the phys-ed office saying, `We want to do this, we'll make this happen,'" Malloch said -- to a squad one step away from the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations AAAA tournament. OT had the opportunity to earn a trip to provincials yesterday (Wednesday) with a victory on its home floor over Hamilton's Bishop Ryan in the Golden Horseshoe Athletic Conference semifinals (the game concluded after the Beaver's press deadline). Aquinas was also alive for OFSAA, as were the White Oaks Wildcats, the team OT defeated in the playoff semifinals. The Raiders were to be home to Hamilton's Cathedral yesterday in a GHAC AAA qualifier, and the Wildcats were to visit Stoney Creek's Cardinal Newman in the other GHAC AAAA semifinal. -- Jon Kuiperij White Oaks rally falls just short in Sr. Tier 2 basketball final Specialists in tight games during the Halton senior girls' basketball season, the White Oaks Wildcats were done in by one in Monday's Tier 2 final at Sheridan College. White Oaks fought back from an early double-digit deficit to pull within two points in the fourth quarter, only to drop a 36-34 decision to the undefeated Assumption Crusaders. "I was very impressed and pleased and proud of my girls for reducing that lead," said Wildcats coach Ryan McLaughlin, whose team had won three of its previous four games by five points or less. "It's frustrating when you're so close but you can't quite take the lead or tie it." Last season, it was the Wildcats who entered the Halton Tier 2 final with an unblemished record, only to lose 3429 to the King's Christian Collegiate Cavaliers. In that game, McLaughlin felt his team didn't quite know how to react when facing a rare deficit, and he had hoped to put Assumption in a similar situation Monday. "Sometimes, teams don't know how to trail when they haven't had a loss all year," he said. "This year, we were the underdogs." Monday's contest was a stark contrast to the regular-season meeting between the Crusaders and Wildcats, which Assumption won 64-27 Oct. 27. White Oaks played that game without one of its strongest players, Vanessa Garcia, who scored 10 points Monday. Katarina Mioc, who helped the Wildcats win a junior Tier 2 title with Garcia in 2011, had a game-high 14 points Monday for White Oaks. Hayley Sova (12 points) and Alcian Satchell (10) led the Crusaders, who won the first senior girls' basketball championship in their school's 37-year history. -- Jon Kuiperij White Oaks Wildcats player Vanessa Garcia (in blue) goes to the floor battling for the ball against Assumption's Ashley Almeida. | Photo by Graham Paine -- Oakville Beaver -- @HaltonPhotog Shootout practice pays off nine months later for Jenner by Herb Garbutt Oakville Beaver Staff The interesting thing about preparation is you're never exactly sure when it will pay off. Leading up to the Sochi Olympics, the Canadian women's hockey team finished each of its games against Calgary-area midget teams with a shootout, regardless of the score. The idea was to prepare the team in the event Olympic gold Best Buy CORRECTION NOTICE NEWSPAPER RETRACTION FOR THE BEST BUY NOVEMBER 7 CORPORATE FLYER In the November 7 flyer, page 13, the headline above various Case-Mate smartphone cases (WebID: 10262239/ 10269073/ 10319335/ 10319338) was advertised incorrectly. The headline should state "Protect your iPhone in style with Case-Mate." Also, on page 17, the Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015 1 Year for PC (WebID: 10325960) was advertised incorrectly. Please be advised that although advertised as bilingual, the installation and product are solely in FRENCH, with no way to change the language. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused our valued customers. came down to the best team U.S. goalie Molly Schaus on breakaways. from centre ice. Tied 2-2 And it looked like it after overtime, Saturday's might as Canada final of the Four rallied from a 2-0 Nations Cup in deficit in the final Kamloops, B.C., four minutes to tie came down to a the United States shootout. in the gold-medal "That's why we game. Fortunately, do it, you never after Marie-Philip know when a Poulin's overtime game will go to a goal, the Canadishootout," Jenner Brianne Jenner ans never needed said. "I had lots to find out if all of looks before that practice was needed. Sochi." Nine months later, And how did she do? though, Oakville's Brianne "To be honest, I have no Jenner, whose goal started idea," she said. "Scored a the Olympic comeback, few, missed a few." found herself staring down Jenner won't have as much trouble remembering Saturday's result. She faked a shot, momentarily freezing Schaus, pulled the puck to her backhand and roofed it behind American netminder for what would prove to be the winning goal. Jenner wasn't even supposed to be there. She had missed the team's fall training camp with an injury but when Poulin was hurt a couple of days before the start of the tournament, Jenner got the call. She had one assist in three games, but her speed caused fits for opponents throughout the tournament.