Over the weekend (March 27 and 28), the Apex U16 Paranoia boys had a great start to the season by winning the Super Series tournament held at Abbotsford Traditional Middle School. Coach Tsang has been very impressed on how quickly the team has come together and by having a successful tournament will help the team grow on and off the court and hopefully continue its winning ways.

Going into the tournament, the team was ranked 8th but quickly, teams were beginning to see the talent that Apex has been producing. Not only was Paranoia was getting praise from other teams, many coaches have talked about how talented and well rounded all 3 Apex teams were – Boom, Paranoia, and Impact.

During the first day of the tournament, Paranoia won all 3 of its round robin games (Eagles – who finished 2nd last year at Provincials, Vernon – Team Donovan, & Victoria B Chargers). After a 3-0 effort, the team finished first in their pool and prepared itself to be what was a successful Sunday morning and afternoon.

On Day 2 of the tournament, the boys looked determined to get to the finals. Their first opponent was against one of our Apex brothers, the U16 Impact. The Impact battled hard and with timely rotation checks by Coach Pappas, tried to stop team Paranoia. In the end, the Paranoia boys won 2-0 and were on their way to the semi-finals against their other brother team, Apex Boom. On a side note, Apex Boom probably had one of the games of the tournament during their quarter-final match. Their opponent during the quarter-final match was the very talented FVVC Blue. Apex Boom came out very strong during the first set and built a strong lead. However, FVVC climbed their way back and started to build momentum, but still lost the first set to Boom. During the second set, FVVC carried that momentum and built a large lead which resulted to a 24-18 score. But Boom would not give up; they clawed their way back to win 26-24 and booked their ticket to the semi-finals against Paranoia. Apex Boom definitely deserves a hand for their efforts of “never giving up.”

During the semi-final match, Paranoia came out very slow, and Boom carried their momentum, winning the first set. However, the Paranoia boys, lead by their captain Kevin Liu, would not let this opportunity to get to the finals slide. Paranoia battled back and won the match (2-1) against their friendly rivals of Boom. This booked Paranoia’s ticket to the finals against Victoria Chargers.

In the finals, the boys started slow once again. Victoria took advantage of the slow start and won the set 25-17. However, Paranoia finally woke up from their slow start and began to play the game of volleyball. Timely serving and defense by Tomas Rapaport and Derek Kwan lead the way. These two would come off the bench and go on serving runs which helped the boys to the tournament victory. Also, Michael Tran and Kevin Liu played a great match. They lead the team in kills and brought their “A” game to the match. The end result was a 2-1 victory by the Paranoia boys over the Victoria Chargers. Coach Tsang believes that this team has a lot of chemistry together and hopefully this is just a beginning to a successful season.

Coach Tsang