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