Three weeks ago, following the F.H. Warriors’ Supervolley final loss to the Porter Creek Rams, coach Mike Kelly was at a loss of how to get his athletes to play like a team.

Whatever transpired in those few short weeks worked as the Warriors downed the Rams to win the Yukon Championships 3-2.

“I think it was a good game overall,” said Warriors Grade 12 player Anshil Kumar. “We played our best and we won.”

Following their Supervolley loss to the Rams, coach Kelly had a lengthy locker-room talk with the team.

“After the Supervolley game, he was kind of like, ‘OK, we kind of need to work more as a team,’” said Kumar.

They approached their practices with a renewed energy and started working together.

“We just figured out how to play together as a team in the last three or four weeks,” said Kelly. “We had some really good practices. We learned how to compete and how to be there for every point of the match.”

They also switched up the line-up.

“We saw how that clicked and some of our teammates are good in some ways and bad in others, so we tried to work together,” said Kumar.

For Kelly, who is coaching this senior Warriors team for the first time, it was a game of trust.

“They had their own method, where they had been playing for years together and they had certain people in certain places and so we tried that at the beginning and it was pretty good,” said Kelly. “But in my head and in my heart I wanted to try something different. I went with more of my gut instinct, my coach’s instinct and once I gained their trust, they sort of believed in the changes and it was really effective.

“We had our passers passing more and our hitters hitting more with just a couple subtle changes. And also our match-ups, especially against Porter Creek, were better with those changes.”

In front of a packed crowd at Porter Creek Secondary School late Saturday, the Warriors and the Rams faced each other in their final rematch of the season. The Rams – favourites heading into the game, they had won both the Dawson City tournament and the Supervolley final – won the first set 25-23.

But the Warriors came back to win win the middle two sets 25-23, 25-23.

With their triple crown on the line, the Rams battled back to take the fourth set 25-19.

The Warriors settled in and started the tiebreaker set with a massive kill from Kumar. They kept up the intensity.

Kelly said that a long game, would actually suit his team.

“At the beginning of the season we wanted to say go big or go home, but we tried to play that kind of style, but what we needed to be is like more of a grinding team,” he said. “By playing even pressure throughout the game, it’s kind of like water pushing on a bridge and you make a crack and eventually the water breaks through and the floodgates open and that’s sort of our philosophy, to keep pressure on the whole time until the other team is crumbled a little bit.”

With a deep, steadying breath, the Warriors’ Jordan Runions served and with a little help from his team, found the hole in the Rams defense to earn the Warriors’ third-straight Yukon Championships win.

“It feels nice taking away the triple crown,” said Kumar. “I think that PC played pretty well so it was nice to battle them back and take away something they were really trying hard for.”

The end of the season is bittersweet for Kelly, who enjoyed the Rams- Warriors rivalry.

“Coming second-best in the previous two tournaments was hard but it all gets washed away when you win the Yukon Championships,” said Kelly. “It’s really nice to end the season on a win.”

The Grade 11/12 Warriors’ female team also won their final match-up against the Rams, earning their Championship banner in three sets 28-26, 25-22 and 25-18.

“It feels really good,” said Grade 11 Warriors player Alice Frost. “I kind of didn’t realize it at first. I thought we were still playing and I was kind of out of it and then everyone came running on the court and I was like, ‘Oh my God, we won.’”

The double Warriors wins mark the first time in more than five years that F.H. Collins has been home to both the senior winning banners in the same year.

In Grade 9/10 finals action, the Porter Creek Black Rams girls team beat the Vanier Crusaders One team to win the championship.

“This team has actually won every single set that they’ve played the whole season,” said co-coach Erin Pasloski. “Pretty impressive. Pretty great.”

In the boys Grade 9/10 final, the Vanier Crusaders beat the FH Collins Warriors One team in straight sets.