The Keyano Huskies Men’s Volleyball team quickly returned to the win column after a loss Friday, topping the Ambrose University Lions in a five-set battle (25-17, 25-22, 20-25, 22-25, 15-9) Saturday in Calgary.
“Something that we’re learning on this journey as we play all these teams is that regardless of our past quarter-final failures that each team wants us,” Head Coach Keegan Kuhr said. “They want to put another loss in our column. That’s kind of what Ambrose, kind of how they played; they played hungry.
“They played desperate and they pushed us. It was nice for us to reset and just go into that fifth set and just really play good volleyball in all aspects of the game.”
The Huskies received 17 kills from Joao Cunha, 13 from Athus Silva, and 10 from Trey Weinmeier as part of a 54-39 edge the Huskies held in the kills department. Cameron Visscher added eight kills while Calgary product Nathan Luken had a few thunderous kills to spark the pro-Huskies side of the crowd.
As the Lions found a way to pull ahead in each of the third and fourth sets to extend the match, the resolve of the Huskies showed strongly. Facing a similar situation to matches from the first semester where they dropped a trio of five-set matches, the Huskies refused to give up in the deciding set.
“We’ve been talking a lot about our mindset and about our ability to reset,” Kuhr said. “I thought we fought it on Friday and I thought today we were good. Even when things were tough and maybe we weren’t playing to the way we could, whether I was frustrated, the guys stayed together and they weren’t as frustrated as you kind of saw on Friday.”
Eight Huskies had multi-dig games, while all players recorded at least one in the match. Anderson King led the Huskies with five, edging out Visscher and setter Nikola Sreckovic, who each had four.
Silva was on his game once again with five blocks, his fourth-straight game of at least five blocks. Sreckovic added 42 assists from the setter position, his third game of 40-plus assists this season.
“I think that’s important,” continued Kuhr of the team’s resolve. “I hope we can keep this learning lesson and we can move forward with that type of mindset.”
The Huskies return to the road next weekend, heading to Edmonton to challenge the Concordia Thunder. First serve for Friday’s matchup is scheduled for 8:00 p.m. while Saturday’s first serve is scheduled for 3:00 p.m.
