Greater Melbourne Volleyball Academy
Follow GMVA on
  • Home
  • Programs
    • SpikeZone >
      • Dandenong
      • Oakleigh
      • Upwey
    • Oakleigh
    • Upwey
    • Youth
    • Junior
    • Senior
    • Elite
    • CoE >
      • Athletes
  • Junior League
  • Videos
    • Squad Photos
    • Pictures
    • Strength & Conditioning Exercises
  • News
    • Uniform Shop
    • Schedule
    • Links
  • CollegeIntro
  • Supporters
  • Coaches
  • Contacts

Playoffs

3/23/2014

2 Comments

 
Picture
Playoffs

Last time I updated my blog we were heading into conference championships at home. It was a really exciting time as it was the start of 6 do-or-die matches that we were hoping to play. It was great experience to play conference champs at home. Our gym is kind of small with stands only being on one side, but we packed it to capacity every game seating between 500-600 people. The atmosphere was incredible. The championships began on the Thursday night before the tournament at the awards banquet. We cleaned up a few awards; Braden (our right side) was named a second team all-star, Tim (left side and co-captain) and I were named first team all-stars. Tim also was named ACAC player of the year and our coach was named coach of the year. This showed the success we had as a group, and it was time to relay that success into playoffs.

In our quarter final match we came up against 8th seed Briercrest, a team that had underperformed all year and had pushed us in our two previous encounters with them. Briercrest are hosting nationals so they automatically qualify and didn’t need to win conference champs, like everyone else. Briercrest pushed us again in a high level quarter final that saw us win in 4 sets. Our athletic director said at the time that it was the best 1 v 8 match he had seen. We met Augustana in our semifinal match. We had some good tactics on block and defense and were able to comfortably take the semifinal in 3 straight sets. Our last match came against Grant Macewan the only team to beat us during the year and a team that will be going CIS next year. Our game plan was quite simple out pass them, out serve them and out work them. The first two sets were strong side out battles until we got a 3 or 4 point lead just after 20 in both sets. The third set was the strangest set of volleyball I have ever played. We knew that the most dangerous team is one with their backs against the wall. So we were a bit surprised when we jumped to an 11-6 lead. But sure enough Macewan came back and we were only up 13-12. The next patch of 10 or so points was incredible. Macewan was highly emotional due to factors as facing elimination, the crowd against them and a couple of calls against them as well; this lead to two red cards and their coach being put in the penalty box. We were once again up 3 or 4 points at 20, but this time Macewan fought back. We held strong though and on our second attempt we won the ACAC championship 26-24. It was a great feeling to go back-to-back but at the back of our minds we knew we still had one more job to do. I was named MVP of the tournament which I was happy to accept but not what I was here for.

We departed for nationals 9 days later. Hopping on the bus at 11am and arriving at Moose Jaw Saskatchewan at 8pm that night. We had a practice the next day as well as an interview with the press. The facility was pretty cool seating 1600 people with stands surrounding the court it looked pretty sweet. That night we had the awards banquet Tim was recognized for his All-Canadian as well as a fellow GMVA athlete Curtis Stockton. Our coach was then announced as the coach of the year, a well-deserved award for the endless hours he has spent planning and coaching. The next day was competition day we came up against the Quebec champions in the quarter final. We finished them off comfortably in 3 sets and were able to get rid of our nerves, get our game going, get used to the atmosphere and the court. The next night we came up against CBC who had been the top team in BC for most of the year. We started nervous and they were playing hard, and passing really well. CBC took the set after a terrible late call from the head referee. During the break of sets we seemed a little shocked and a little nervous because this was not how it was supposed to go. Our coaches though kept calm and told us to “trust the process” meaning we just need to control what we can and the result will go our way. So we went out with that in mind and we still found ourselves in trouble at 17-19 down, but we trusted what we can do will eventually come out on top, and it did. We went on a 6 point run and didn’t look back for the rest of the match, taking the semifinal 3-1. We hardly enjoyed that win because before we even had got off the court we were thinking about our next game. The message from a lot of the older guys was “1 more”. All what we had done was qualify for a chance of redeeming ourselves for last year’s loss. We stayed to watch the other semifinal and found out our opponent will be a familiar foe Briercrest who had rode the incredible home crowd all the way to the final.

My sleep was restless that night having multiple dreams about the final. I woke up with only one thing on my mind. Our game was at 8pm at night so we had the whole day to kill before the final. We kept routine though going for a light workout in the morning, our pre game meal 3-4 hours before the game, and our pre game meeting 45 mins before the game. By the time we hit the court for the start of warm up there was hardly a space in the crowd and plenty more people were still streaming in all dressed in Briercrest’s colour yellow. Then for the whole warm up the crowd was on their feet clapping their thunder sticks to the beat of whatever song was currently playing. After warm up we walked onto the court waiting to be introduced and the crowd erupted, it was hard not to take in the atmosphere 1600+ people all standing making as much noise as possible. People had drums, thunder sticks, blow horns, cow bells, a group had painted their bodies, a couple had a fry pan and a ladle and I think one person had a trumpet. This resulted in us waiting another 10 or so minutes because the announcer had to wait for the crowd to quieten so he could be heard. The game started and the crowd continued there noise. They had a tactic to make as much noise as possible when we serve. It was so loud when I first went back to serve that I didn’t hear the referee’s whistle.

Once again our game tactic was to play our game and to win the first contact battle. We were able to do this well in the first set and took the game 25-20. This took the energy out of the crowd and we could now hear the referee’s whistle. During the second set we continued our fighting efforts playing great defense that resulted in us taking a 10-2 lead. Briercrest fought back to 18-15 but we again pulled away and took the set 25-19. During the second set the announcer announced that Red Deer’s Woman’s volleyball team had just taken the national championship. This would mean is we took the last set we would create CCAA history as being the first program ever to win both men’s and woman’s nationals in the same sport in the same year. The third set was really hard to deal with mentally. As a lot of us said afterwards that we knew we were going to win when we went 10-2 up in the second. It was hard to stay focus on each point and try to not think about celebrating to early. Our approach was to take it 5 points at a time, be the first team to 5 then the first to 10 and so on. Once we got up 20-17 though we could no longer think about 5 points ahead, so we focused on winning 1 point at a time. We won the third set and the match from a missed serve and took the set 25-18. I couldn’t have asked to win a better way, we were ranked number 1 in the country the whole year, we went 23-1 for the year, we won 70 sets and only lost 10, we beat a crowd of 1600+ which included some other teams in the tournament that were cheering for Briercrest and we played our best match of the year in the national final. It was great to win with this group because it was such a long road back after last year’s loss, but we did it and in a very commanding style. Afterwards we were presented with champion hats, t-shirts, medals, a trophy and a banner. They also awarded the tournament all-stars; Tim, Osborn (our middle) and I were named first team all stars, and our right side Braden was named tournament MVP.

The celebration afterwards was great we had a team meal with all the coaches and parents as well as the athletic director. It was really good to hang out with the coaches and parents in a social environment, which is really rare. The celebrations continued during the next week as well. We have been treated to dinner’s in our honor, box seats at hockey game, being paraded out on the ice and a party hosted by the college. The college has been buzzing about athletics as our basketball team narrowly lost in the national final and our woman’s curling team just won nationals as well.

It has just started to sink in that we won, 2 weeks after. I will always remember my time at RDC I have created some great memories and made some friends that I will stay friends with forever. My focus has now though has moved onto getting my body into the best possible physical shape, which includes getting rid of any niggling injuries, increasing my strength, speed and jump. I am looking forward for the challenges that lay ahead. Going to the CIS will be a great opportunity to improve my game and test myself against bigger more physical players. I’ll be returning home in April so I will see you all then, until then stay safe.

Sam Brisbane.


2 Comments

Second Semester Begins

2/9/2014

1 Comment

 
First semester ended with exams, a record amount of snow, and with the Red Deer Kings being a perfect 8-0 without losing set. This seems like a great result but we aren’t just satisfied with rolling easy teams in three sets. We aim to improve every game and embrace it when teams challenge us. I have been working on running a faster more dynamic offense that creates more isolations and makes it really hard for the opposition to know what will be coming at them.

Once volleyball was done for the semester we had about 2 weeks down time to spend Christmas with family and friends. I spent Christmas with some friends on the team. They made it feel like a normal Christmas even though I wasn’t around my family. The only difference is that I had my second white Christmas, which was even cooler as we had a record amount of snow, probably about 3 to 4ft deep. Once Christmas was done we had a team trip to California which was an amazing experience and great to have some weather above 0 degrees. We were based an hour outside of LA and about 20 minutes from Anaheim, where the GMVA boys stayed. Our trip started with a training and game against the 2 time defending NCAA champions UC Irvine. They were very impressive super physical and seemed in great shape. We pushed them in all sets though it was just a few runs in all sets. We lost in 3 sets 25-21 25-23 25-20. After that game our coached challenged us to become more physical team like UCI. The next part of our trip was a game against the 15th ranked team in the NCAA Cal Baptist. This was a much more all round game from us and the scoreboard reflected with a 3-1 win. The rest of the trip consisted of a few training sessions (one of which I got to see GMVA), Disneyland, and the beach. It was a great trip it had a mix of volleyball and a vacation, I felt it set us up for a good second semester.

Some other news from the break is that I found a CIS school to go to next year. I have officially committed to Mount Royal and will finish my degree and my last three years of eligibility there as well. The whole process was new to me. But because I went to a college first I am able to change schools and move up a division to the CIS. Red Deer has been great to me and has taught me a lot and I have met lots of great people and had a lot of fun times, and we still have a great chance to defend our ACAC championship title and try and win a national title. But I decided that to progress in volleyball I need to play at a higher level more consistently, I began talking to the Mount Royal coach in December and committed in January, Mount Royal is a strong program which competes with the best CIS teams in the country. I very excited for the challenges that lay ahead of me.

After the break we went straight back into routine with games on Friday Saturday and practices Monday through Thursday. We played a total of 10 games in 5 weeks all against playoff teams we finished winning 9 and losing our last one against Grant MacEwan. This meant though we finished the regular season on top with a 17-1 record, and will go into conference championships as hosts and number 1 seeds. The championships will be held on the 21-23rd of Feb and will be elimination knockout. If anyone wants to watch at home you can watch it live here http://www.sportscanada.tv/acac/index.php/upcoming-live-broadcast-schedule/mens-volleyball.

1 Comment

The new College Season

11/10/2013

0 Comments

 
Back to Red Deer College

I arrived in Calgary in late August about a week before school started. I got picked up at the airport by a friend and teammate. We then drove the hour and a half drive back to red deer while exchanging stories of our break. That night I saw all my friends and teammates that I hadn’t seen for 4 months, and got to meet some of our rookies for this current season.

We have a great group of guys and the core of our team is highly motivated to revenge our 2nd place finishing last year. Our pre-season consisted of three tournaments, one in Calgary, Edmonton and Red Deer. In the first two tournaments we finished with a record of 6-2 but we never really played our best. Personally I was named the mvp of both of those tournaments, it was good to be recognised but I think as a setter you can do a lot to impact the result of the game but in the end it comes down to if the hitters can put the ball away, we are very strong offensively so it makes it very easy for me. Our last tournament in Calgary was a bit different, because we were playing against the top division. We played well in patches again finishing the weekend with a 2-2 split and only just losing 15-12 in the 5th to university of Calgary. That weekend gave us a lot of confidence but playing at that level also showed what we needed to work on.

After a couple more weeks of tough practices it was time for the season to start. The first two weekends we swept medicine hat and olds, not dropping a set in all 4 games. I have been trying to transfer what we have been working on in practice into these games. Particularly bunch blocking and the pipe ball, it’s really coming along and was evident in our intersquad match this Thursday. The intersquad match was just about the toughest and funniest game I have played in all year. We had a draft to pick the teams, played in old school jerseys and put lunch on the line for the winners. My side won in 4 sets. We have another couple of games against Keyano this weekend that I’m really excited for, to see if we can play as well or better than we did in that intersquad match.

I will try and make these blog entries more regular to try and give people an indication of the college life. If anyone has questions just go right ahead and ask.

Sam

0 Comments

My First Week

9/13/2012

1 Comment

 
So after 32 hours of travelling and then spending a night in Calgary I was finally picked up by my coach, assistant coach and a third year middle that turned out to be my captain. They then drove me an hour and half down the road to Red Deer. I was showed around campus and to my residence, which is very close to the majority of my classes so it should only take me 5 minutes to get to class and to trainings.

The College isn’t as big as the big American Colleges or some of the CIS schools in Canada but all the facilities are up to date. RDC has a very proud and prolific history of sport especially volleyball. They are always aiming to win provisional’s and then to compete well at nationals. I have been told due to the success of RDC we get great support whenever we play at home.

As for the Volleyball here, it’s great! You can really see the difference between the level of ball control and skill between the first year players and the players that have already been at Red Deer for 1 or 2 years. Our coach has a real focus of ball control and defence so after 1 of the first sessions I have developed court burn around my knees on my hips and even one on my hand due to a poorly executed dive. We don’t start playing until late October but we have a warm up tournament later this month against some CIS schools, which is exciting.

Otherwise the schoolwork is manageable and interesting. Everyone who I have met is really nice and friendly. The volleyball guys are making the transition easy for me, by helping me out when I look lost around campus, or if I don’t understand some of the local lingo.

Well that’s pretty much all from me ill try my best to do regular updates.

Thanks,

1 Comment

    Samuel Brisbane

    Sam went to Eltham High School in Melbourne and played for Melbourne Falcons. He was a GMVA athlete for 4 years

    Archives

    March 2014
    February 2014
    November 2013
    September 2012

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.