Credit: volleyball.org.au
The Queensland Pirates have won their first Women’s AVL title in 10 years, defeating WA Steel in a five set marathon at Carrara Indoor Sports Stadium on the Gold Coast.
The Pirates started their season towards the bottom of the ladder, winning only three of their first eight matches of the season. Their momentum changed after their bye in the middle of the season, when they started to get a few consistent wins on the board, including a double victory over the seven-time AVL Champions, the Melbourne Vipers.
Scraping into the final four with only one point more than NSW in fifth place, QLD were the underdogs of the finals, but their grit and determination saw them knock off the top seeds from Victoria in the semifinals, and hold out Western Australia for two hours and ten minutes to claim the win 3:2 (25-20, 25-27, 25-21, 17-25, 10-15).
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QLD captain Kylee White said she was speechless after her team’s victory.
“It’s an honour to win gold and I think we really worked hard for it, especially to come from being fourth and fifth on the ladder to now winning, it’s been an incredible season and I don’t have words for what this means,” White said.
“WA are such a consistent team that it’s quite scary going up against them, but we kept our composure and kept playing our game which got us through in the end.”
Looking back on the season, White said she was really proud of how far the team has come.
“At the start of the season, we were just going through the motions, because it’s such a high level competition, I think other teams were just rattling us a bit. We finally found our groove and when it counted we really stepped up and that got us to the end.”
The gold medal is not just a special moment for the players, but also for QLD Coach Terry Rudder, who is in his debut season as an AVL coach.
“I’m shocked, we barely snuck into the final four, so to get the win is pretty special,” Rudder said.
“As a player, I got to that stage two or three times in my career, and never once walked away with a gold medal, so it’s actually pretty special to walk away with a gold today.
“From the start of the season, we had a very clear style of play that we wanted to play.
“The hard part was actually evolving it, so the longer the season went, the better it worked out for us and we managed to fall into some faith and belief and trust in that system and at the end of the day, that…
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