University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds wins the AUS championship
The Cape Breton University saw an unexpected end to the Atlantic University Sport women’s volleyball final match that took place on Sunday. Most of the votes to own the championship title were with the Saint Mary’s Huskies. However, when the game came to its close, the hoots from the University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds fans were the loudest. Not only did the Reds manage to defeat the favourites of the tournament, they did so with a sweep.
Coach John Richards of the V-Reds explained away the win in the following words: “We just tried to stay in the moment and not look ahead, so we didn’t really predict or see anything coming .We just tried to be really good on every point. I thought we served and passed well and executed the game plan just like (Saturday) night when we beat a good team in Dalhousie.”
The first set of the match was nothing but embarrassment for the Huskies. They could not seem to come to terms with the Reds play at all and performed amateurishly. The Reds outplayed the Huskies in all aspects of the game and won the set smoothly by 25-9.
After such a bludgeoning defeat, the Huskies seemed to come to their senses and stepped up their game considerably. The second set of the match, unlike its predecessor, gave the vibes of a final being played. From the start of the second round, both the teams were neck to neck against each other. The tug of war went on till the end of the match, but the final pull was made by the Reds, who won the set at 25-22.
By the end of the second set, the V-Reds seemed unstoppable. Building on the momentum generated at the end of the second set, the V-Reds started the third one with a 6-0 lead. The Huskies could not quite gather themselves together and did not put in much of an effort. In the middle of the set, the Reds still had a huge lead at 19-7. All the Huskies could do after this point was to close the gap till 15. The Reds finished the story by putting a ‘the end’ to it at 25-15.
“The hardest job I had in that third set was to just calm them down and keep them in the moment and not let them look ahead to the celebration but they were really good,” said Richards.
Whatever the outcome of the match has been, both the finalists have impressive records to go home with. The Huskies have been able to finish the regular season with 14 wins to their credit at the expense of 4 losses. In contrast to this, the V-Reds have 11 wins in their bag, while suffering seven defeats.
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