The Niagara Knights men's volleyball program improved to 2-0 in 2018 after defeating the Sheridan Bruins Sunday, January 14th 3-1. The victory puts the knights at 6-4 on the 2017-18 season, good for 5th sport in the ultra-competitive OCAA west division. The final set scores for the game were 25-21, 25-18, 18-25, 25-19.
After taking the first two sets, Niagara began to struggle, dropping the third set 25-18. Niagara regained their form in the fourth, closing out the match with an impressive 25-19 victory. "Today I really liked how we battled back in the fourth set and just stuck to our process," Said Knights' head coach Nathan Groenveld. "We didn't let errors or anything Sheridan did phase us, we just kept coming back. I thought we did a good job serving today and that allowed us to use our block/defense to score a lot of points."
The Knights were lead offensively by their 3rd year setter Aiden Atkinson (Ingersoll, Ont.), who had a heavy presence in Niagara's passing game Sunday afternoon. "I really liked how Aidan Atkinson ran our offense today," said Groenveld. "I think as we continue to work on our passing game through him, we will see it get even better and more efficient."
Another strong performance came from the Knights' first year libero Robert Zalewski (Ingersoll, Ont.) who was solid defensively all afternoon. When asked about his 1st year libero, Groenveld had nothing but praise. "Robbie is really coming into his own as a leader and is effectively controlling our serve receive and block/defense system from the court."
The Knights will be back in action Thursday, January 18th when they host the visiting Humber Hawks (8-2, 3rd OCAA West) at the Welland Campus Athletic Centre.
