Hey Everyone!
Logan here, sorry we haven't been as punctual on our blogs lately, letting school get the best of us! We've had 2 weekends of competition since the last post by Costa so let me start off by letting you know how those went.
First off we hosted Memorial University from Newfoundland on November 3rd and 4th, coming up with the win both nights 3 sets to none. Saturday's game we started off a little slow in the first set, our passing wasn't as good as we wanted it to be and we were missing some defensive jobs. However we managed to come back as our passing and defense improved and thanks to some great attacking. Overall our serving was not what we wanted it to be either, which caused us to give up even more points. The second set went pretty much the same way and then in the third we finally picked it up to string together some great runs to win the match.
Saturdays game we started off with some lineup changes, including myself and another new middle blocker Craig Toonders starting the game. Unfortunately our new lineup took to much time to adjust and we had some problems all the way through the set, though we kept it together to pull out a close win against a Memorial side who really wanted to take a set off us. We came out and performed better the next 2 sets, to win the game in 3. Craig had a great game in the middle recording more than 10 blocks! We were very proud of Craig's effort in this game.
The next weekend we hit the road to Dalhousie to take on our rivals the Tigers. Our first game we lost in 4 sets. We simply did not play well this entire game, we were not passing well, the setting wasn't great and everyone was making errors. We continued to dig ourselves into holes a different points in the game and overall we could not recover from poor starts and mistakes at crucial points in the game. The second day however was much better. Craig Toonders went out to start the game on day 2 again, and had another great performance, taking home player of the game honors! We came out ready for this game, behind much improved serving and passing. It was a great second day, and allowed us to keep hold of first place in the AUS, but we are still unhappy with our performance in that Friday night game, and we need to be able to play our best for more than just one game a weekend to contend in the AUS and CIS, specifically with the Quebec conference during our Interlock tournaments.
Speaking of which, next up we will heading to Quebec city tomorrow morning for our second Interlock tournament of the year! We play Sherbrooke Friday the 23rd at 6:00pm, then on Saturday the 24th we play Montreal at 11:00am, followed by Laval at 8:00pm. Wish us luck!
Also would like to make a shout out to the Right to Play UNB club, they had a great play day on Saturday November 3rd to raise awareness for Right to Play and get lots of people out to just have some FUN.
Second shout out is a plug for myself, I have been growing a mustache since November 1st for Movember, to raise awareness and funds for prostate cancer! I have a page on the MoBros Canada website, which you can get to here http://mobro.co/logank. Please check it out and donate, and small amount can make a difference in helping research into prostate cancer and raising awareness in men to look after their health and be proactive in protecting against prostate cancer!
That's all check back for an update on our games against Quebec!
Logan Keoughan
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Month of October
Hey everyone!
I apologize for kinda slacking the past few weeks on our teams write ups. Lots has been going on over the past month!
I'm going to back track all the way to Oct 12-13th weekend. Our team travelled to PEI for a weekend for some team bonding and to play a split-squad match infront of all the teams at the Colonel Gray High School tournament. This year we have 3 island athletes on our team (myself, Matt Sweet & Alec Parise), so instead of doing a community out-reach in a rural NB area, we decided to take a little drive. We drove over Friday afternoon and arrived in Summerside around 7pm. My parents (along with the help of Matt Sweet's parents) hosted our entire team for supper, it was a feast! So once again, thank you soo much for the hospitality mum and dad, and Glen and Della...it was unreal! After our meal we headed to charlottetown and arrived at our hotel...which was covered through VolleyballPEI, Thank you! We spent the early part of Saturday morning doing different team bonding activies, and gave our team the chance to get to know one another a lot better. Around lunch team we headed over to Gray for our split squad match. The match was a really great experience, not only for the fans watching, but also a good for our team to play in a new gym/environment leading into our season. After our match we headed to Alec's house for another feast! Rachel and Terry did an amazing job and made sure our belly's were FULL before heading home, thank you!...all and all, it was a really great weekend, definitely worth while!
This past weekend, our team travelled to Montreal to kick off our season play! We had 3 big matches against the University of Sherbrooke, University of Laval and University of Montreal. Our first match was against sherbrooke. The match started off slow, with each team having abit of nerves. But as the first set went under way, both teams got into the groove. Sherbrooke edged the first set with a score of 26-24. After a few line up adjustments, our team was able to bounce back in the next 3 sets and take the match 3-1. Our next match took place Saturday morning as we took on the #4 ranked Laval. Our team didn't execute as well as we're capable of during this match, and in each set seemed to have a slow start and play the catch up game. Unfortunately, those type of mishaps lead to losses, and this case was no different. We ended up losing the match 3-0 with set scores of (25-17, 25-16, 25-23). This match did give an opportunity to some of our younger players to see court time and hopefully they were able to gain from the experience and learn from it before we travel back up to Quebec in the end of November. Our final match of the weekend was against Montreal, the host team. The atmosphere was great, and tons of fans showed up for the match.Once again in this match, we seemed to have a slow start, not able to find ourselves. the match took four sets, with Montreal coming out on top. This was the first time our team had lost to Montreal in 5 years. Set scores were 25-23, 25-22, 20-25, 25-22. Finishing the weekend with a 1-2 was clearly not the preferred result but was a serious wake up call to our entire team. You can't play any team in the CIS and not show up from the first point to the last point...it just can't be done. This past week has been focused on putting our team in more pressure situations and it seems to be paying off. Our intensity is higher, and our mindsets are more clear on what we want to obtain out of this season...and more importantly, how we are going to execute in order to achieve it!
Lastly, this week I'm going to introduce you to one of our first year middles, Sam Alves. Sam is a 6'6 middle blocker from Melbourne, Australia. On the floor, he is a very passionate player, you can always feel his presence when he steps onto the court. Outside practice, Sam loves his half price aptz and wing night at the campus pub! He's taking a Bachelor in Arts in school. Here is a couple facts about the boss-man himself:
Q: Why did you choose UNB to play volleyball in Canada?
A: I chose UNB because it was already a well established volleyball program within the CIS. Dan was very approachable and after talking to some of the current players about the university, team etc, it made my decision easy.
Q:What has been your favorite volleyball experience in your life?
A: It would definitely be winning the 19U Australian Junior National Championships this past spring...especially after recieving 3 years of silver medals the years before.
Q: What has been your biggest adjustment since arriving in Canada?
A: Hands down would be the weather! It was way colder here then back home...and the snow hasn't even fallen yet!
This weekend we have two home matches against MUN at 8pm Saturday, and 1pm Sunday...if you're around town, come out and show some love for the boys! Cheers everyone,
Costa
I apologize for kinda slacking the past few weeks on our teams write ups. Lots has been going on over the past month!
I'm going to back track all the way to Oct 12-13th weekend. Our team travelled to PEI for a weekend for some team bonding and to play a split-squad match infront of all the teams at the Colonel Gray High School tournament. This year we have 3 island athletes on our team (myself, Matt Sweet & Alec Parise), so instead of doing a community out-reach in a rural NB area, we decided to take a little drive. We drove over Friday afternoon and arrived in Summerside around 7pm. My parents (along with the help of Matt Sweet's parents) hosted our entire team for supper, it was a feast! So once again, thank you soo much for the hospitality mum and dad, and Glen and Della...it was unreal! After our meal we headed to charlottetown and arrived at our hotel...which was covered through VolleyballPEI, Thank you! We spent the early part of Saturday morning doing different team bonding activies, and gave our team the chance to get to know one another a lot better. Around lunch team we headed over to Gray for our split squad match. The match was a really great experience, not only for the fans watching, but also a good for our team to play in a new gym/environment leading into our season. After our match we headed to Alec's house for another feast! Rachel and Terry did an amazing job and made sure our belly's were FULL before heading home, thank you!...all and all, it was a really great weekend, definitely worth while!
This past weekend, our team travelled to Montreal to kick off our season play! We had 3 big matches against the University of Sherbrooke, University of Laval and University of Montreal. Our first match was against sherbrooke. The match started off slow, with each team having abit of nerves. But as the first set went under way, both teams got into the groove. Sherbrooke edged the first set with a score of 26-24. After a few line up adjustments, our team was able to bounce back in the next 3 sets and take the match 3-1. Our next match took place Saturday morning as we took on the #4 ranked Laval. Our team didn't execute as well as we're capable of during this match, and in each set seemed to have a slow start and play the catch up game. Unfortunately, those type of mishaps lead to losses, and this case was no different. We ended up losing the match 3-0 with set scores of (25-17, 25-16, 25-23). This match did give an opportunity to some of our younger players to see court time and hopefully they were able to gain from the experience and learn from it before we travel back up to Quebec in the end of November. Our final match of the weekend was against Montreal, the host team. The atmosphere was great, and tons of fans showed up for the match.Once again in this match, we seemed to have a slow start, not able to find ourselves. the match took four sets, with Montreal coming out on top. This was the first time our team had lost to Montreal in 5 years. Set scores were 25-23, 25-22, 20-25, 25-22. Finishing the weekend with a 1-2 was clearly not the preferred result but was a serious wake up call to our entire team. You can't play any team in the CIS and not show up from the first point to the last point...it just can't be done. This past week has been focused on putting our team in more pressure situations and it seems to be paying off. Our intensity is higher, and our mindsets are more clear on what we want to obtain out of this season...and more importantly, how we are going to execute in order to achieve it!
Lastly, this week I'm going to introduce you to one of our first year middles, Sam Alves. Sam is a 6'6 middle blocker from Melbourne, Australia. On the floor, he is a very passionate player, you can always feel his presence when he steps onto the court. Outside practice, Sam loves his half price aptz and wing night at the campus pub! He's taking a Bachelor in Arts in school. Here is a couple facts about the boss-man himself:
Q: Why did you choose UNB to play volleyball in Canada?
A: I chose UNB because it was already a well established volleyball program within the CIS. Dan was very approachable and after talking to some of the current players about the university, team etc, it made my decision easy.
Q:What has been your favorite volleyball experience in your life?
A: It would definitely be winning the 19U Australian Junior National Championships this past spring...especially after recieving 3 years of silver medals the years before.
Q: What has been your biggest adjustment since arriving in Canada?
A: Hands down would be the weather! It was way colder here then back home...and the snow hasn't even fallen yet!
This weekend we have two home matches against MUN at 8pm Saturday, and 1pm Sunday...if you're around town, come out and show some love for the boys! Cheers everyone,
Costa
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