LANIGAN – Lanigan Central High School went 4 and 0 in round robin and are now back to back provincial gold medal champions.
Lanigan girls defeated Oxbow to win the 3A girls provincial volleyball championship.
Haley Wagar, coach and teacher at Lanigan Central, said that this group of young women are extremely talented and were a determined team.
Wagar is the head coach and is in her third year coaching the senior girls volleyball team at Lanigan High school. She was the assistant coach for one season in Lanigan. Barb Klapak is the assistant coach. Klapak has coached volleyball for 25 years acting as both a head coach and assistant coach for school and other club teams.
The group of girls who claimed gold were:
- Grade 10: Callie Chernishenko, Jenevieve Melin, and Raea Wildeman
- Grade 11: Faith Friesen, Montana Kulchyski, Cally Morningstar, Reese Stroeder, and Kya Wildeman
- Grade 12: Abi Dumanski, Tessa Jones, Chloe Melin, and Reese Wildeman
Wagar said the starting seven athletes (Montana Kulchyski, Reese Stroeder, Kya Wildeman, Abi Dumanski, Tessa Jones, Chloe Melin, and Reese Wildeman) have played together since they were in Grade 6; playing both school volleyball in the fall and competitive club volleyball throughout the winter months. Wagar complimented the entire team impeccable chemistry on the court because of the many years they have played beside each other.
Lanigan has made it to the provincial tournament consecutively for four years in a row and has a history of a strong volleyball community. This would be the tenth volleyball provincial championship that Lanigan Central High School has won. The seven starting athletes along with Wagar and Klapak won the 3A provincial championship last year (2022). Prior to that Lanigan has 8 other volleyball provincial championships in the following years: 1991, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2002, 2004, 2014
“Our goal at the beginning of the season was to win another provincial championship,” Wagar said. “We were confident that the team would be a top contender. Being the top seeded team, we knew that if we played our game that it would be challenging for teams to contend with us. The girls had their eye on the prize the entire weekend, never letting teams gain enough momentum to take a set.”
