THUNDER BAY – The St. Ignatius Falcons have called themselves the comeback queens all season long.
They lived up to the moniker on Wednesday night.
The Falcons rallied from six points down in each of the first two sets of their senior girls high school volleyball championship against the St. Patrick Saints, and went on to a straight set victory to claim their sixth championship since 2010.
St. Ignatius took the opening set 25-23 at the C.J. Sanders Fieldhouse, trailing 16-10 at one point, then grabbed the second set 28-26, staving off a pair of Saints set points to go up 2-0 in the best-of-three affair. They wrapped up the title with a relatively easy 25-18 win in the third.
Rallying from behind is nothing new for the Falcons, who dropped just one game all season, a three-set loss to St. Patrick on Dec. 4.
“The mentality was just to keep going and not lose focus,” said the Falcons Cayleigh Fossum-Martin, a Grade 11 student at the north-side school.
“We just had to keep pushing and fight for what we wanted,” she said.
Teammate and St. Ignatius captain Alex Comeau said it was a pretty crazy was to win.
“The first two sets were pretty rough, but we came back and fought hard. We came here to win and that’s what we tried to do,” Comeau said.
“We’ve called ourselves the comeback queens all year. We’ve had a couple of situations like that in many games and (it’s just) our total ability to come together in games and get done what needs to be done.”
It didn’t hurt that they were familiar with playing from behind, she said.
“I’d say we definitely have a lot of experience at doing something like that, but as a team we know how to work through it together and finish it.”
St. Ignatius coach Laurie Foster, who guided the junior team to a championship in 2018, said she wasn’t too worried, given the Falcons depth and talent.
“We believe in them wholeheartedly and sometimes we just need to fuel them with a little fire,” Foster said.
“We told them it was their game, it’s been their season the whole season. We we’re 11-1 in the regular season and we were undefeated in the playoffs. It was our time.”
The Saints faced a tough task in the double knock-out finale, forced to win two games to the one needed by top-ranked St. Ignatius.
The Falcons will hit the road next weekend to take on either Fort Frances or Dryden in the NWOSSA final, the winner earning a berth at the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations championships later this month.
