Five local school teams off to playoffs

Ken Johnston
Editor

There will be few weeks like this one in local sports history.
Last week the Rainy River High School court teams (volleyball and basketball) clinched three berths to the NORWOSSA championships in Sioux Lookout, and the Mixed Curling team travelled to Kenora Sunday to compete in NORWOSSAs.
The Mixed team won their first game over the hometown favourite Beaver Brae 8-3. The team is skipped by Giselle Bonot and is comprised of Matt McQuaker, Dayna Seguin, Mike Soptiuk, Carl Speis and Jeremy Bonhomme (there are two alternates).
Yesterday they would be facing Atikokan and Dryden. Results were not available at press time.
The Lake of the Woods Bears Boys Hockey team will also be travelling to Section 8A championships this Friday in East Grand Forks. If they come out on top there they will be off to the State Championships. The team is comprised of both US and Canadian kids as part of a long standing international sports cooperative between Rainy River High School and Lake of the Woods High School.
In the final games of the court season for RRHS last week the Owls travelled to Ignace on Wednesday where the Senior Boys Basketball team convincingly won 51-29, the Junior Boys Basketball won 44-33, the Junior and Senior Girls Volleyball teams both won in three straight sets.
On Thursday the Owls swooped into Sioux Lookout to split the wins and losses with the hometown Warriors. The Senior Boys Basketball team lost 30-54 and the Juniors won a nail-biter 38-36 with two seconds left in the game. The Junior Girls Volleyball team won three sets to one and the Seniors lost in three straight sets.
Later that day the volleyball teams played Pelican Falls. The Juniors won three sets to none and the Seniors won three sets to one.
The road trips saw the Junior boys move to first place in overall league play. Their exciting win over Sioux Lookout was the Warriors only loss of the season. Both were tied with wins and losses at the end of the season but because SL only beat Rainy by one point when visiting RR and the Owls beat them by two they earned first place standing by one point.
The Senior Boys basketball and Junior Girls Volleyball team will be competing at NORWOSSA’s as well. Their semi-final games will be at 5:00 and 1:30 p.m. respectively on Thursday. The Junior boys automatically advance to the finals on Friday at 1:30 p.m. The Senior Girls loss in Sioux Lookout dashed their hopes of making the playoffs.
RRHS Athletic Director Guy Arpin said he can not recall a time when RRHS sent three out of four teams to NORWOSSA’s in a single season. “My congratulations go out to our athletes and to our coaches. Obviously we are doing something right!”