As one of the most passionate high school volleyball advocates throughout his 25-year teaching history in Prince George, Jay Guillet is being completely unbiased when he says there are three double-A boys teams in the city that deserve to be playing in this year's provincial championship in Kelowna.
One of them is the Duchess Park Condors, the school where Guillet served as senior boys coach for 10 seasons, the team he took to the top of the provincial heap in 1999. The Condors held a stranglehold on the provincial double-A rankings this season until two weeks ago when they lost their No. 1 perch to Langley Christian. The defending provincial champion Lightning beat them in straight sets in the final of the George Elliot tournament in Lake Country.
The Condors, however, won the senior boys city championship last week and have yet to lose a match against a team from the North Central zone. They are favourites to emerge as the champions.
Guillet is now head coach of the College Heights Cougars senior boys, having switched schools in 2003, and his Cougars are the eighth-ranked team in B.C. Twice he's led them to provincial silver, including last season, and Guillet would love nothing more than to top that feat and bring home a banner.
"Duchess Park is very strong this year, they're going to have a great opportunity (to win provincials)," said Guillet, who says this is his last season coaching the senior boys team. "We're competitive too, but we have to get there. (To beat the Condors) every player is going to have to be on their best game all the time.
"Double-A is the strongest volleyball in the province - we're No. 8 in double-A and we beat the top triple-A team in the province this year, Earl Marriott. We went into provincials last year ranked sixth and if you get hot at the right time you can build some momentum and do great things."
Guillet knows the 11th-ranked D.P. Todd Trojans are quite capable of pulling off a surprise or two over the next two days at the five-team zone championship at Duchess Park gym and they could earn the right to play for a provincial medal.
"There's not much separating our team from D.P. Todd and that's going to be a big test for us," he said. "D.P. Todd is a good team and it's unfortunate we can only have two teams (qualify) because we have three teams that could finish in the top-10 at provincials. But we only have five double-A teams competing at zones so I can't argue with that."
It all starts today at 3 p.m. when the Kelly Road Roadrunnners take on Dawson Creek for the right to play the top-seeded Condors in a semifinal match tonight at 7. On the other court at 7, College Heights faces D.P. Todd in the other semifinal. The winners meet in the final Saturday at 12:30 at Duchess Park.
College Heights is hosting the senior girls zone championship, which also starts this afternoon. The round-robin tournament includes College Heights, Nechako Valley, D.P. Todd and Lakes District (Burns Lake). The final will be played Saturday at 12:30 p.m.
The winner advances to the provincial girls double-A championship at Nechako Valley in Vanderhoof.
Duchess Park is also hosting the Grade 8 district championship this weekend.
