By Sarah O. Swenson
[1]Loyalist's Matt Woods makes a diving save during Saturday's volleyball action against the Redeemer College Royals. The Lancers were knocked out of the playoffs, despite a late charge that forced a fifth, tie-breaking set. Photo by Sarah O. Swenson
The Loyalist Lancers men’s volleyball team suffered a devastating loss this weekend, falling at home against Redeemer College Royals in a play off qualification match.
“It certainly wasn’t the way we envisioned our season ending, but we had a great year overall,” said team co-captain Kyle Donnan.
“Obviously, it’s not the result we wanted,” agreed head coach Dave Templar. “It felt like it was a good match. We had just a couple too many stretches of errors.”
The Royals edged the Lancers 3-2 (21-25, 25-20, 25-19, 22-25, 15-12). The loss is reminiscent of last year’s qualifier, when Redeemer defeated Loyalist on the road 3-0.
With the Lancers bounced out of the play offs, the Royals will now go on to face the Humber Hawks in the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association quarter-finals.
Going into the match, Loyalist held an impressive 9-1 record at home and the Lancers had the early momentum, taking the first set easily, but fell into a lull during the middle matches.
“The rest of the match was a battle, for sure,” says Templar. “But we certainly fell asleep in the second and third for a bit.”
Despite the mid-game slump, the Lancers charged back to force a fifth, tie-breaking set. Unfortunately, Loyalist fell behind quickly and couldn’t dig themselves out of the hole they’d created.
“That’s really hard to come back from in a shortened set,” said Templar.
There were, however, several questionable calls which Templar believes — had they gone in Loyalist’s favour — might have turned the tide.
“But at the same time, I’ll never put a loss on the refs, that’s for sure. If we control the match, then the calls don’t matter.”
Josh Lappala led the way in scoring with a whopping 21 kills, while co-captain Matt Woods did his work on the defensive side of the ball, making 22 digs. Donnan added another nine kills to his record breaking total, capping his college career with an impressive 796 kills.
“We had a great year overall and every member of the team wanted to achieve success in that game,” said Donnan. “Unfortunately, sports always don’t work out to how you envision it.”
Despite the season ending on a bit of a low note, and the loss of some key player to graduation, Templar says that he is already looking forward to next year.
“With the returning players that we have coming back, if we can put a couple of players around them, to develop with us, then I’m really happy with the core group that we have coming back.”