The St. Thomas University Tommies are set to face Universite Sainte-Anna Dragons on Saturday in the opening match of the men’s championship.
The 2018-19 season has seen very different teams in terms of the standings for both of these teams. The Dragons, a team that had been winless in ACAA competition over the past four years (winning a total of four sets over that span), have won 13 sets this season, including a 3-2 match victory over the Holland College Hurricanes. The Tommies improved their league record from last year, 8-7, to 12-3 this year, tops in the ACAA.
“USA has improved so much this season and will definitely challenge us in our semi-final,” said Tommies head coach, Henri Mallet. “They are fast defensively, and they all have quick arm swings, so our block defense will need to be on for us to have success. Plus, we’ll need to be able to maintain our focus offensively throughout the match to keep the pressure on them.”
The Tommies are a perfect 5-0 against the Dragons this year, with the Dragons coming close to winning back on January 27th, falling 3-2.
Last year’s ACAA Champions, the Tommies aren’t looking past the Dragons and will tap into that experience from last year to help make it back-to-back championships.
“Last year we had a very young team with more rookies than returning players, and we were in third place coming into the championships,” said last year’s team MVP Christian Christie. “This year we have a more mature team which helped our team immensely during the regular season, as we finished in first place. Going into the championships this weekend, we believe we have the more spread out offense that is going to make it hard for the other teams to slow us down. Our team's mentality this year is to execute when given a chance and to make sure we better each ball. if we can do that and fight for every point, I think we have a good chance at winning this year.”
The Tommies lost some key cogs from last year’s championship run, but that hasn’t slowed the team down this season.
“We lost our 5th year setter and one of our starting left sides to U Sports, plus having one of the youngest team in the league, we knew it was going to take a lot of hard work to get some results in our conference,” said Mallet. “Fortunately, with the depth of our roster and Henry [Doucet] stepping in as our starting setter sooner than expected, we were able to have a smooth transition from last year.”
Saturday’s match gets underway at 4:30pm and can be seen at acaatv.ca.