Trojans fall to bronze medal match

LETHBRIDGE, ALTA., (Feb. 28, 2020) - What helped the SAIT Trojans men's volleyball team to victory Thursday night, hurt them on Friday.

Too many service errors resulted in the Trojans blowing a six-point lead in the opening set, as they fell 3-0 (25-23, 25-18, 27-25) to the host Lethbridge College Kodiaks in their Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) Men's Volleyball Championship semifinal match.

"For us, we know we are living and dying by the serve," said Trojans head coach Dallas Soonias. "It's not that we missed 22, and yeah that's a high number, but we didn't put enough in. . . We couldn't control the game like we normally do."

Not all is lost for the Trojans, who will still play for an ACAC medal on Saturday afternoon as they will take on the Briercrest College Clippers in the event's bronze medal game at 3pm.

It will mark the fourth straight year SAIT will play for a medal of any kind, as they captured bronze in 2019, gold in 2018, and fourth place in 2017.

That said, Soonias knows it will be a tough one to get up for.

"I think we have to let the guys feel this loss, grieve it as fast as we can," he said. "And then we see who shows up tomorrow. I'm not going to knock any of our players if there's something missing from their game, I understand that. But, there will be six players on the floor that will be going after it tomorrow."

Lethbridge will go on to play Red Deer College in the gold medal match at 5:30pm.

In the opening set, SAIT controlled the play from the get go, silencing the large and raucous Lethbridge College crowd. However, a myriad of service errors allowed the Kodiaks to hang around in the set long enough to turn the tide. 

What was a 16-10 lead turned into a 25-23 loss for the Trojans.

The loss seemed to shock the Trojans, who looked out of sync in the second quarter. Service errors were then compounded by hitting errors that gave the Kodiaks more and more momentum.

"Our side out and block defence wasn't the best, but that's not what killed us," Soonias said. "It's that we weren't able to push them off the service line. High level men's volleyball is very dependant on the serve and the pass and we were missing half of that tonight."

The third set saw the Trojans fight back to try extend the match, but the Kodiaks were not going to give any ground.

Riley Grusing (3rd year, Calgary, Civil Engineering Technology) led the Trojans with 12 kills in the match, while adding four digs and a block.

Carter Hansen led the Kodiaks with 11 kills, five digs and three blocks.