Trojans fight back to earn ACAC bronze

LETHBRIDGE, ALTA., (Feb. 29, 2020) - For the third straight season, the SAIT Trojans men's volleyball team earned an Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) medal.

The Trojans came back from a 2-0 deficit to beat the Briercrest College Clippers 3-2 (22-25, 20-25, 25-23,25-23, 15-12) to earn the bronze medal at the ACAC Men's Volleyball Championship on Saturday afternoon at Lethbridge College.

"I said yesterday that we were going to try find six guys that were going to go after it today," said Trojans head coach Dallas Soonias. "We worked through it and found six dudes who played extremely intelligent volleyball, and we got the job done. I am proud of the way they played."

The win marks the third straight year the Trojans have earned hardware at the ACAC Championship. 

Two years ago at Medicine Hat College, they won the whole thing. 

Last year at NAIT, they took home the bronze.

The energy from both teams to start the match was a little sluggish, which is understandable considering less the 24 hours before, both teams had their dreams of a gold medal and a trip to the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) National Championship dashed.

The Clippers took the first set, and perked up by doing so, winning the second set a little more handily. 

Cue the pep talk.

"We told the fellas to stop trying to beat the ball through the block on every play when you're at a disadvantage," Soonias stated. "If you put the ball in play, that team is very predictable in what they do in transition. We've been working on our block defence, so if we trusted ourselves to tip and play block defence, we were going to get chances. Over the course of the last three sets, we worked into a groove with that."

Helping things along was veteran outside Mark Anderson (5th year, Calgary, Bachelor of Business Administration). The powerful righty had not seen the court all weekend, but started Saturday's game and did not disappoint, recording 15 kills to go along with eight digs and three service aces.

Not a bad performance for one's last ever post-secondary game.

"I think just the idea that it was my last game kind of said it all," he said after posing for numerous photos with family and teammates. "That gave me a lot of motivation to go and play well for the guys. This was it for me, so I wanted to leave it all out on the court."

Much like the Clippers, a won set seemed to spark the Trojans, as they took the fourth set to send the match to a fifth and final set.

In that final set, SAIT got out to an early lead thanks to the tough serves of Anderson and setter Maddux Greves (2nd year, Calgary, Bachelor of Business Administration).

The Trojans held a 9-5 lead at one point, but the Clippers stormed back and tied the match at 11-11 when ACAC Player of the Year Karym Coleman recorded his second ace of the set.

SAIT called timeout, and came out of it energized. Anderson put away a kill to go up 12-11. After a passing error made it 13-11, SAIT middle Chris Kayser (4th year, Calgary, Bachelor of Business Administration) hammered home a kill to make it matchpoint.

The Clippers earned one more point before Trojans outside Jarett Noel (3rd year, Calgary, Geographic Information Systems) put away a Briercrest overpass for his 18th kill of the night to end the match.

"We really had to work for that one," Anderson said. "Briercrest pushed us when we were down 2-0 there, so we had to make an adjustment to fire back. We slowly got some momentum and went from there."

From there, Anderson made a point of showing some love to his teammates.

"I just want to say how much I appreciated the guys this year. That's really the best part of being on a team," he said. "To be surrounded by good guys and even better friends in my five years here has been amazing."

Also shining Saturday afternoon was rookie middle Evan Yakymishen (1st year, Sherwood Park, Alta., Journalism). Like Anderson, Yakymishen had not seen the court in his team's previous two games. And like Anderson, he came up big when his number was called.

He finished the game with seven kills, four blocks and two service aces.

"I don't know if we keep these stats, but if we look it up, Evan Yakymishen may be the greatest server in SAIT history," Soonias said with a wry smile. "And with Mark, from pre-season to now, he completely changed the way he attacks the ball and what he does with trouble balls. It's a really hard thing to do in one season, so I'm really proud of the changes he made because it really helped our team."