Home of the Champions

The address is 161 5th Avenue South. It's a volleyball factory that churns out championship teams. Two more provincial banners were won during the month of November and they will be added to the gymnasium wall at Niverville Collegiate Institute. The Panthers captured the "A/AA" junior varsity boys championship in Roblin and then won the "AA" varsity boys title in Russell.

Niverville Collegiate varsity boys captured their first banner in 1977. The Panthers would add eight (1978, 1986, 1988, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2010 & 2012) more titles to the schools resume. The varsity girls won their lone banner in 1992. The junior varsity boys were victorious in 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008 & 2012 while the jv girls won in 2011. That's 16 championship banners. There was also a period when the varsity boys teams made the decision to jump two classifications and take a run at the "AAAA" championship.

Ron Limpright was the setter on the Panthers 1977 & 78 championship teams and has been the head coach of the varsity boys team since the legendary Don Dulder retired a few years ago. "The volleyball at NCI has been part of the school culture for a long time and it sort of has become a tradition," said Limpright who also coaches the jv boys squad. "Certainly Don built the volleyball program here at NCI and it's been fun working with him. He put it in a good position to continue."

So where does it all begin and why does volleyball rule at Niverville Collegiate? "It's actually starting to filter down to middle years," answered Limpright. "The grades five & six are starting to do volleyball club in-house and that builds into the junior high years and of course the jv and varsity teams."

If your goal is to build a successful volleyball program - you need players who work hard and have the desire to succeed - but above all you need competition and in Zone 13 there was plenty of that to go around.

"Last year and this year at the "AA" level we had three teams (Niverville, Green Valley & Steinbach Christian) competing in the provincial championships and all of the teams did extremely well," said Limpright. "It certainly is good to be playing in a zone that's as strong as that - where we had three teams in the semifinals and three teams competing for the championship last year as well. We also had Gabrielle Roy Collegiate from Ile des Chenes that competed in the "AAA" and won that championship. They were also in our zone play and part of building everybody stronger is good competition."

"The teams have competed at the "AAAA" level a number of times and right now we have a fairly young team and some of the boys are questioning that again." added Limpright. "We'll have to look at that. I'm not sure if we're quite there yet but there is the possibility of that happening again. Soccer has grown in our school as well so that's balanced with the volleyball right now. It's always part of why we end up with a pretty good second half surge because the first half we are dealing with the soccer as well."