The Yukon Schools Athletic Association Senior Volleyball finals featured close competition in both matches.

The finals took place at F.H.Collins in Whitehorse on Friday.

In the Senior Boys final, St. Francis of Assisi 1 swept the finals from the St. Francis 2 team in two hard-fought games by scores of 26-24 and 25-20. The first games lasted 24 minutes, while the second one was only 20 minutes long.

The Star spoke with St. Francis Senior Boys captain Sebastian Tajonera following their victory. This was the Grade 12 student's last final with his high school teammates.

"It feels great. A bit sad that it's the last one that I'm going to do for high school but it was amazing."

Tajonera had mixed feelings about the result of a final that saw teammates versus teammates, saying he would have rather had all of them win a title together.

"It feels good, but kind of it's a bittersweet ending … but I think at the end of the day, all of us are winners here. All of us get the banner and we get to take it home for our school."

A lot of the Crusaders nearly didn't play in this tournament.

"A lot of us got the flu after the last tournament … and one of our teammates couldn't make it, which was really unfortunate. All of us were under the weather and were just struggling to get out of bed for this," Tajonera related.

Considering the round-robin results, it was no surprise that both St. Francis teams ended up in the finals.

"Our first crew, which is my team, won all of their games in the round-robin," recalled Tajonera. "And the second crew won all but one game. So it was kind of a good way to sweep the competition."

Tajonera added "In terms of practice, we got good practice with the Filipino Canadian Volleyball Association. Thanks to them for bringing us in like family and inviting every single one of us for more touches on the ball. It got us better."

The Star also spoke with one of the St. Francis Senior Boys coaches, Tanner Cassidy, after the boys final.

"We're proud to have this many kids out competing at this level. Some of them put in five years of hard work. In their years they haven't been able to necessarily finish each season because of COVID kind of shutting things down last year and they lost another season earlier to COVID, so it was nice to play a full season so they could show what they could do," he said.

In the girls' final, F.H. Collins also swept two close games against the Porter Creek Secondary School team, 25-15 and 25-23. Both games lasted 25 minutes.