London Free Press

STRATHROY -- Down 9-4 in the opening set Wednesday, the bad memories of a year ago began to return for Becky Breau.

Thankfully for her and the rest of the Mother Teresa Spartans, the memories didn't stay long.

Instead, they were banished by a 25-23, 25-23, 25-20 sweep of the Saunders Sabres in the TVRAA Central AAAA senior girls' volleyball final.

After losing a five-set heartbreaker in the OFSAA qualifier a year ago to Lucas, the Spartans will make their provincial debut March 8-9 in Newmarket.

"I started to think, 'Here we go again,' " said Breau, a middle blocker and a co-captain. "There was a moment I thought our nerves were going to get the better of us. And we were nervous -- even in the warmup, it showed."

But the Spartans collected themselves.

"When she called our first timeout, our coach (Jenna Thomson) asked us why we were here. She told us we'd worked so hard to get here and that helped us focus," Breau said.

"This feels pretty good," she added of the title. "Now we've got something to hang on the wall that proves we're a good volleyball team. We've always made a point of never being overconfident; we knew we had to work hard to get this far. Now we expect to be tired the next two weeks as we're going to have to work even harder -- we still have some weak points we need to work on."

Thomson said calming her players was imperative.

"Once they settled down and got relaxed, they started playing their game instead of being frantic. Saunders couldn't run much of an offence because we served so well."

The Spartans began the season with considerable returning talent, but having victory-lapper Nicole Irving rejoin just after the season started proved the catalyst, Thomson said.

"When the season started, we didn't have a setter,. So having Nicole come back was a massive difference. Without her, this wouldn't be possible."

Saunders co-coach Jan Marcus said her team just couldn't capitalize on the early momentum.

"You can't let go of a lead when you have it. We just stopped talking. Communication is huge for us and when the girls are talking and coming together as a team, things just sort of fall into place. But once they started catching up, you could see our communication start to break down and we started making unforced errors.

"We were definitely the underdog, but we also knew that when we played them in the league, we didn't play well. We just wanted to prove to everybody that we could play with them."

E-mail steve.green@sunmedia.ca, or follow stevegatLFPress on Twitter.