For the first time since before most, if not all of the players were born, the Swift Current Comp Colts senior boys' volleyball team took home the SHSAA 5A Boys' Volleyball Provincial gold medal.

The Colts swept the competition on their way to the top spot in the province, last done in 1999, and the only set they lost all tournament came in the first game on Friday against an all-too-familiar opponent.

"That was the game I was worried about the most," said Colts' head coach Dan Andrie on the opposing Balgonie Greenall Griffins, a team who beat the Colts twice this season. "Balgonie plays well, they're well-coached, they have some really strong outside hitters, so getting that win out of the way gave our boys a lot of confidence and we just kept rolling from there."

They defeated the Griffins in three sets (21-25, 25-17, 15-10), before straight-set wins over Regina's Campbell Collegiate and Saskatoon' St. Joseph High School to end day one of the provincial tournament.

In Saturday morning's first game against historically dominant Prince Albert St. Mary's High School, the Colts clinched top spot in their pool with a pair of 25-23 set wins, and once again set the tone ahead of their playoff push.

"I think in the last couple years we've developed a pretty good rivalry with those guys in P.A.," Andrie said. "So it's good to see us come out and battle them. They're probably our biggest rival in the province by far. There's a lot of intensity, it doesn't matter if it's a game for first place or a round-robin game during the season - emotions are always high. Beating them is always satisfying."

In their opening round of playoffs, the Colts matched up with the host Carpenter School of Meadow Lake, winning 25-19, 27-25.

That win set up a semi-final against Balgonie in a familiar setting - the Balgonie Griffins downed the Colts in three sets in the semi-finals of Swift Current's home tournament this year.

This time around the Colts swept in two sets (25-19, 25-21) clinching a spot in the provincial final against Saskatoon's Holy Cross High School.

As was the trend for the previous five games, the Colts cruised to the win in straight sets (25-20, 25-19) to be crowned as 5A Boys Provincial Champions.

"A lot of hard work went into building this team, I've been coaching a lot of these guys for over five seasons, so it means a lot to see that they won, and they won the right way - they were very sportsmanlike, they played hard, they didn't get down on themselves, so it was a great weekend for us," Andrie said.

This makes it back-to-back medals at provincials after claiming the bronze last season in Regina, and Andrie noted the growth process from last season until now makes the gold medal effort that much more deserved.

"Their mentality compared to last year is completely different. It's one of the things I'm most proud of as a coach. Last year, I don't know if the maturity was quite there, they were nervous, and they'd get down on themselves really quickly when bad things would happen," he said. "Whenever we were scored against this weekend or gave up a couple of points, the guys laughed it off, they played through it, they stayed up, stayed positive with each other, so I think that's the big change that I saw in the last year. The skill got better, with more reps the skill is just going to get better, but I think their mental toughness was one of the greatest aspects of us winning the championship this weekend."