The Vanier Vikings cruised through the first two sets... stumbled in a third set battle and then finished off the Avonlea Eagles in four sets on the opening night of the Moose Jaw High School Senior Boys Volleyball League.

The Vikings secured the four-set win (25-12, 25-16, 30-32, 26-24) on their home to kick-off the 2017 campaign on Wednesday night.

“You can always take lessons away from the first match of the year and prior to the game today we were talking a lot about mental edge and focus, and the boys got to see the benefits of it and what happens when you get tired, your brain stops working a bit,” said Vanier coach Levi Broda after the game.

Vanier cruised through the first two sets and looked like they were on their way to another win in the third set when Avonlea battled back. The match went back-and-forth into the extra points with neither side able to get the edge until the Eagles scored the 32-30 win.

The fourth set was more of the same with Avonlea giving Vanier another tough fight before the Vikings secured the win.

“You’ve got to give credit to Avonlea, they served us tough in that third and fourth set, but I’m really proud of the boys for working hard, not quitting and sticking to our systems today,” said Broda.

The Vikings have just one grade 12 this season with a lot of grade 10 and 11s to fill out the rest of the roster, but Broda said the team is eager to learn and he can see them getting stronger as the season moves on.

“This is the first match of the year, so I’m really happy with the boys for the way they came out and it’s a good stepping stone for the rest of the year,” said Broda.

The Eagles were missing a couple of their veterans in the game and battled hard to avoid the three-game sweep.

Head Coach Marlyn Stevens said it was a good first outing to see what they need to work on for the rest of the season.

“We were able to knock some rust off and see what we could do with them,” he said.

“We had a lot of unforced errors, so it was a lot of nerves, but we’ll move past that and work on getting our attack going... it was definitely good to see that they could get a win in and start to compete a little harder.”

In the girls game on Wednesday, the Caronport Cougars rolled to a three straight set win (25-11, 25-14, 25-21) over the Vanier Spirits.

The league is back on the court for a pair of games on Thursday night with the Central Cyclones heading over to Peacock to take on the Toilers. The boys game goes at 6:20 p.m. and the girls hit the court at 8 p.m.