Trent kicked off the start of the winter semester with Frost Week activities, wrapping up the festivities was Men’s and Women’s volleyball doubleheaders both Saturday and Sunday.
Starting off the weekend was the Women Excalibur with a date against the Loyalist Lady Lancers. Trent Excalibur swept the lowly Lancers in straight sets. For Loyalist it was their tenth loss of the season, in a year they have only been able win once as they stand second from the bottom in the OCAA East.
The Trent Men and Loyalist Men would make for a much better matchup in front of sufficiently filled out bleachers at Trent’s Athletic Complex.
The game went back and forth for four sets, leaving it to the fifth and final set to decide the match. Loyalist barely edging out Trent in the end, 25-23. The match was a moral victory for the Excalibur as they went head-to-head with a team much higher than them in the standings.
Sunday’s game for the Trent Women would be the most important of the weekend, as they faced off against Georgian. The Excalibur and Georgian Grizzlies found themselves tied for second place in the OCAA East Conference late in the season.
The match tetter-tottered between Trent and Georgian. The Grizzlies snuck out of the first set with a 25-23 win. Then Trent came back with a slight win of their own, 25-21. The two teams traded the following two sets by blowout margins, the third going to Georgian and the fourth to Trent.
The pattern of the match would have had Georgian winning the final set, but the Excalibur weren’t about to let patterns decide the game. They came out with momentum from their dominating fourth set win and won the fifth just as convincingly – 15-10.
The win was important for the women’s team as it improved their record to 11-1 on the year, giving them sole possession of second in the standings. While the Georgian Grizzles fell to 10-3 sitting on third place with an extra game played compared to Trent.
The men’s game started off strong with both sides smacking the ball side to side in intense rallies. The first set took extra points to determine a winner, when a Trent player hit the ball of out bounds it was a disappointing ending to a good set of volleyball. The score of the set was 27-25.
The close loss in the first set seemingly deflated a Trent team that had originally come out with an inspired effort. The Grizzlies took advantage of the disappointed Excalibur squad and won the next two sets and the game with neat and tidy margins of 25-18 and 25-19.
Trent Men’s volleyball team stayed stagnant, with only one win they lay tied in last place with La Cite, a team they will get to play on January 25. It might be a chance for the Excalibur to finally turn their season around as they having been playing competitive volleyball against good teams without reward to this point.
Both volleyball teams play next January 24 in Ottawa against Algonquin, and they won’t be playing back at Trent until February 2, when the women will start off a Sunday doubleheader at noon against Canadore.