Titles are cool, but it’s the memories that matter

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/11/2015 (3957 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ON the morning of the Grey Cup game, outside the football hullabaloo and on the other side of town, another team prepared to contest its league’s top crown.

The Sunday-morning practice, squeezed in before high school water polo playoffs, marked the last time for Miles Macdonell boys varsity coach Tim Au to work out his top-seeded squad. Tonight, the last teams standing in Manitoba’s top tier of high school volleyball will battle for the provincial banner.

For the Buckeyes boys, that means an 8 p.m. championship clash against the razor-sharp St. Paul’s Crusaders. The matchup is classic, the faces familiar; the last time Miles Mac won Manitoba was in 2011, in a final against St. Paul’s. Many of the 17 teens on the Buckeyes roster grew up playing club volleyball with WinMan, which Au helps lead; the Crusaders’ high-flyers mostly played for the rival 204 Volleyball age-group teams.

For years, the opponents gamely spiked verbal strikes across the net, along with bullet balls. But after practice Sunday morning, the Buckeyes agreed they wouldn’t get distracted by words in tonight’s match: with the ultimate prize on the line, there’s no sense letting an opponent get under one’s skin.

“That’s what we used to do,” grinned Buckeyes left side Austyn Ducharme, a standout attacker in last week’s semifinal. “We used to chirp each other so much. We’re friends off the court. But on the court it’s like, ‘Who are you? I don’t want to be your friend. I want to make you cry.’ “

Because this time, there will be no rematch down the line, not for the seniors. Win or lose, tonight’s match will be the last they play like this, together.

That’s the current that swells under every high school championship, the rush of a fleeting moment. Au remembers seeing some of his players in Grade 7 volleyball camps; some of the athletes that will hit the floor tonight have been teammates for as much as a third of their lives.

“Growing up with these guys, it’s made it so much better,” Ducharme said. “It’s kind of disheartening, but it’s super exciting. It’s like, we’re done. We’re going to go out with a bang. But I’m going to miss these guys. It’s been a long journey, it’s been a lot of good times, and it’s going to be kind of sad tomorrow, win or lose.”

Soon, they will go their separate ways. At Miles Mac, left side Zack Thielmann — the last of three brothers to play Buckeyes volleyball — would like to play CIS, like his brother, Brendan, with the University of Winnipeg Wesmen. So that’s one family dynasty making its final bow tonight.

Ducharme might go to Alberta to play college volleyball and study plumbing; or, he might snag a bowling scholarship for an American school. (Yes, there are scholarships for bowling: “I get that question a lot, actually,” laughed Ducharme, a junior phenom and national youth bowling star.)

So the cycle keeps on turning. After nine years at the helm, Au has seen many crops of players move on. The most encouraging part, he mused, is many of them stay in touch: with him, with each other, with the program that brought them up.

In fact, Au received a flood of joshing texts from alumni after a recent article described him as thinking this year’s Buckeyes were the best he’s coached.

“It’s not what I would have wanted to imply,” he laughed. “I had to explain myself… I wanted to say we’re a great team. It was all in good fun.”

Those connections matter. Whether it’s the Buckeyes or the Crusaders to take the prize, or the St. Mary’s Flames or Lord Selkirk Royals on the varsity girls’ side, all of them share this much: they’ve worked so hard to stretch this season this far, and to learn all of its lessons. Not just on the court.

“The most important thing is the friendships and relationships they’ve built,” Au said. “Fifty years from now, we’re not going to remember the scores. We’ll remember if we won or lost, but that’s not what we’ll really value. We’re really going to value the time we spent with one another, and the relationships.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca