Russia spikes Canada’s dream run
VOLLEYBALL: Tired, overmatched men’s team sees its surprising journey end with quarter-final loss
RIO DE JANEIRO — After months of desperately trying to qualify for the Olympics and an unexpected run of success in the round robin in Rio, the Canadian men’s volleyball team was completely spent.
The star player, who was playing through pain, was tired.
His teammates, who surprised everyone by beating the higher-ranked United States and Italy to reach the playoff round of the Olympics, were tired.
Even the head coach was weary and ready to move on after 10 years on the job.
“I feel a little bit of battle fatigue for the group,” Glenn Hoag said Wednesday after his team lost in straight sets (25-15, 25-20, 25-18) to defending Olympic champion Russia in a quarter-final at Maracanazhino Arena.
“Right now I feel pretty empty, pretty tired, but I’m pretty proud of the guys. They had to fight so hard to get here. We said we were not coming here as tourists so we had to train really hard after we qualified in Japan. I sense maybe they need a break. Toward the end they were a little bit tired. We need to be fresh against a team like Russia and we lacked that freshness.”
Hoag’s team was overmatched against Russia, which has produced medals in the last four Olympics. Canada didn’t receive the ball well and made far too many unforced errors on the attack, while the Russians were precise with their kills and frustrating with their defensive digs. It was a disappointing end to a great Olympic experience for Canada, the last team to qualify for the Games and a feel-good story throughout the round robin.
As they walked off the court to one last ovation from the appreciative Brazilian crowd, both Hoag and 6-foot-10 spiker Gavin Schmitt knew this was likely the end of the line.
“I was disappointed with the game at that point,” Hoag said. “I wasn’t really thinking that this is the last one. A little bit thinking, hey, it’s over now. It’s more like the Olympics are over than the fact that I’m leaving.”
Hoag is hoping to help with the transition to a new coach in the coming months and says the team’s priority will be finding a replacement for the 30-year-old Schmitt, who has stress fractures in his leg and has had several surgeries.
“I don’t know how many rods they can put into him,” Hoag said. “Right now, Gavin’s in a situation where his future is uncertain because of the leg. The doctors are going to be looking at him now and they’ll talk about the potential future. But I don’t think he wants to get another operation. He’s had it. The pain is too much.”
While Schmitt was unable to perform at his peak in this tournament, the Canadians still finished fifth at the Olympics, a result no one likely would have predicted a week ago. Canada had not even qualified for the Olympics in men’s volleyball since 1992.
“If you had asked anyone — including a couple of us — if we’d make it to the quarter-finals, you’d say ‘Ummm, not likely,’” middle blocker Justin Duff said. “But we had that as our goal from the beginning and we made it. It’s a great achievement for us because we had a pool of four gold-medal contenders.”
Schmitt wasn’t talking about his own future on Wednesday, but he certainly looked beaten down.
“It’s really big for us to get this far, but most of us believed we could still keep rolling and get a little farther,” Schmitt said. “It’s a little bittersweet, I suppose.
“It’s tough to take something like that in stride after a game like that. I’m sure when we come down after everything and take some time, we’ll realize what it was. We had bigger ambitions for ourselves that we could have done even more.”
Hoag believes Canada is in good shape for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, no matter who comes in to coach the team. There’s a good base right now with players such as wing Nicholas Hoag, his son, and setter T.J. Sanders. The immediate job will be to draft players into the program who can replace some of the outgoing talent.
“Tokyo is going to come super fast,” Hoag said. “A quad(rennial) goes super fast. We need to jump on it now. I’ll still be around for a while. I really do want to help the program because I’ve been a big part of it as a player and 10 years of my life as a coach.”