A sprinkling of emerging teenagers has South West Pirates coach Nic Kaiser bullish about the future.
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Kaiser led the Pirates' division two women's team to a silver medal at the Victorian Country Volleyball Championships in Bendigo on Monday.
The youth-laden team finished the pool section with a commanding 5-1 win-loss record before falling to Maffra in the gold medal match in five sets.
"We were still proud with how we played and I was happy with the performances they put in over the weekend," Kaiser said.
"We had five girls 16 years or younger and only had four girls from last year's team that won.
"To have that sort of turnover and still put in a strong performance, we're very happy with that."
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Kaiser said the Pirates' depth was starting to build which would help boost the side in coming years.
"We had two or three unavailable and two older players were injured," he said.
"It's good to have a greater mass of high-level players."
The women's team made a statement early in the grand final, winning the first two sets before fading.
Maffra won 25-19, 25-22, 17-25, 14-25, 10-15.
"We dropped a little bit and that gave them a chance and they took it," Kaiser said.
Victorian representative Gabby Lougheed made the all-star seven while Bella van Vugt and Cheree McKean rounded out the Pirates' most consistent performers across the three-day tournament.
Kaiser said Sunday was the Pirates' best showing, only dropping one set on their way to three wins.
South West Pirates finished the division two men's competition with one win and five losses.
Coach Tom Beks said the standard had increased which was a positive test.
"It was the youngest side we've had in for a long time which was awesome and we fought well," he said.
"We started rocky and had our first win in a dirty match but the others were really honourable loses."
Beks said the experienced James Holland, Michael Painter and Haydn Stutchbury, who played out of position, were the Pirates' best.
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