Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Season Opener Review

Hey everyone!

I hope you all had an awesome Thanksgiving weekend. Our team has been busy the last few weeks in the gym and weight room, gearing up for our first matches of the season that took place this past weekend. We hosted the University of Manitoba Bisons in a two match series. Manitoba were the 2011-2012 CIS Bronze Medalists, and had only graduated one player from their roster, so needless to say, we were diving head first into stiff competition from the get go.

Our Friday night match was a barn burner that took almost 2.5hrs before a winner was announced. Unfortunately for us, Manitoba took it in 5 sets winning 16-14. It was a good experience for our team though to start off the year, many new faces on the court in new positions. The set scores were 25-22, 21-25, 25-21, 22-25 and 16-14. In our post game talk, we discussed as a team the positives and negatives from the match and as a whole, felt that we probably should of/could of won the match if we could eliminate some of our errors. On Saturday, our team did just that. Outside hitters kept their kill counts in the double digits, and minimized their errors, along with solid blocking from our middles and quality setting, we swept Manitoba 3-0 (25-22, 25-21, 25-20). It was UNB's first time sweeping a Can-West team in our yearly East vs West Challenge Cup. All in all, it was a great weekend of volleyball that showed our team not only has depth, but is able to compete with and beat the top teams in the CIS. Hopefully the good vibes continue into the regular season.

This upcoming weekend we're traveling to my home province, PEI. Our team is playing a split squad match at the Colonel Gray High School Tournament to help promote high level men's volleyball on the island. Our next home court action is Nov 3-4 as we take on the Memorial Sea-Hawks, come out and make some noise!

As promised, I'm going to start introducing you to a new member of our team each blog, this week it's the Viking (and my roommate), Eivind Andersen. Eivind is a 6'4 left handed rightside player in his first year on the team. He moved here from Sandnes Norway after being in contact with our coach last spring. He is taking a Bachelor of Arts with the hopes of majoring in Psychology. Here are a couple Q/A’s from Eivind:

Q: What made you come to UNB?
A: I came here because the volleyball program sounded extremely appealing and the university was considered a strong academic institute in Canada.
Q: What has been your favorite memory so far in Canada?
A:Playing my first match against Manitoba last week. I have never played in front of that large of a crowd and it was very exciting
Q: What has been the hardest transition moving from Norway to Canada?
A: Probably the food, it is a lot sweater in Canada then Norway.