Ambrose Show Improvement in Loss to Trojans
After a discouraging game last night, the Ambrose Lions had a chance to redeem themselves in a rematch against the visiting SAIT Trojans. Although the result was the same, a 3 – 0 victory for the Trojans. The Lions had a lot more fight this evening. New addition, Josh Nickel, added a lot to the Lions attack offensively, and helped bring a belief and spark to the team that the Lions didn't have yesterday. Throughout the first set (and rest of the game), the Lions showed a lot of fights, not giving up on balls, swinging hard and were able to establish a block early on in the game.
The 2nd and 3rd set saw the Lions compete hard and stay right with the Trojans just like the first. Although their passing wasn't perfect, on what was again a strong performance from the SAIT servers, their offence was much more lethal tonight compared to yesterday. Leading the way was Josh Nickel with 10 kills, followed by Nikita Marchenkov and Adrian Strandberg with 5 and 6 kills respectively. Ambrose did a good job eliminating their attacking errors but still struggled from the serving line as through the 3 sets they totaled 19 errors with 0 service aces.
SAIT spread the ball around nicely again tonight and took advantage of the Lions mistakes. Riley Grusing (POG) led the Trojans in kills with 10 while only committing 3 attacking errors. He also totaled 4 aces from the service line. Overall SAIT played another really solid game, avoiding any lapses that would give the Lions any sort of sustained momentum. Towards the end of each set, the Trojans played with confidence knowing they had the talent to finish when it mattered.
Although his team lost tonight, Head Coach Paul Armbruster was much more pleased with how his team competed tonight. "We ended the night with a renewed optimism, adding Josh Nickel is a significant piece for us. I think Josh showed that he can be a help in our offensive game as this was one of our better offensive games we have played."
Adrian Strandberg was awarded the Player of the Game award for the Lions and after the game, Armbruster had nothing but praise for his captain.
"I can't say enough good things about Adrian. He is one of the most selfless and competitive athletes that I have coached. He never makes excuses, he is out there on a day and a half of practice this year at left-side and halfway through the game, he was hitting 38% which was the top out of anyone and last night he had the most kills on the team."
The loss drops the Lions to 1 - 8 on the year, while the Trojans improve to 8 – 1.