With smart play the Lions are able to defeat the Warriors
Daniel Rependa
Contributor
Brains over brawn was the theme of the November 4 volleyball match between the Waterloo Warriors and the Lions. With over half of their team towering between six-foot-five and six-foot-eight, the Warriors looked gargantuan next to York’s players. However, the Lions still managed to knock down the giants, winning 3 sets to 0.
“Most of the teams we play are a lot bigger,” says Nikola Sandic, an outside hitter and one of the top performers of the night for the Lions team. “We are generally one of the smaller teams. But we are technically a lot better than most teams, so we have a lot better ball control, and we’re smarter too.”
The Lions had great ball control and were effective at attacking the Warriors’ blocks despite the size advantage. Waterloo was able to shut down a lot of attacks from the Lions. However, this surprisingly played to the Warriors’ disadvantage. The Lions played the majority of their kills off of the big hands of the Warriors with perfect control, earning a fair amount of points from blocking errors.
In a word, they played smart.
The Warriors’ errors did them no help. In their first two sets they gave the Lions almost half of their 25 points from silly mistakes. Service errors, inexcusable attack errors, and poor communication led to the Warriors’ downfall.
“As opposed to other matches, I think this match we made a lot less unforced errors,” says Sandic. “And that’s key because in the past weeks we would sort of throw the match away and this week we really had to make them beat us.”
The York Lions have now secured a second win in four games of their regular season. Although it is definitely too early for the Lions to be counting their blessings, they are currently .500 in their record early on in the season. Comparatively speaking, with regard to their last couple seasons, where it took almost six or seven games to start picking up stride, the Lions are in a very good position.
“Well, I think the thing is we started off this year the way we ended last year,” says Sandic. “Last year we ended at .500 in the second half of our season and we are sort of picking up from there and working our way up.”
For now the Lions are winning. As long as the Lions keep playing smart and to their strengths, it’s very possible that we could be seeing more victories
