What a great start for Gavin Schmitt and Canada in the Olympics!
Maple Volleys made volleyball headlines yesterday when they won against Team USA in straight sets (25-23, 25-17, 25-23). Hoag (14 points) and Schmitt (13 points) led Canada on their 2016 Olympic debut match.
Post Match Press Conference:
Fred Winters, Captain of Canada: It is a really good start for us. It has been a long time we played USA. We were the underdog in the match and also in our pool. Canada team is really motivated.
Glenn Hoag, Coach of Canada: Of course we are happy for this win. It has been a long summer for us of work, work and work. In the World League we faced some good teams. We just keep going trying to prepare well. USA didn’t play well today and we need to think on what is coming and learn from this.
David Lee, Captain of USA: We couldn’t find consistency. Didn’t serve well in the first and in the third our reception was not good. Canada played great, but I expected a lot from my players.
John Speraw, Coach of USA: It was a very difficult match and I am disappointed. It was not a surprise to me the way Canada played since they have a good program and I expected a real fight. I don’t think we played well from the service line and had a lot of issues in our side of the net but Canada was better than us.
John Gordon Perrin, Player of Canada
“It’s our first match in the Olympic Games and we’re getting used to the stadium. We just wanted to have a good first match and focus on our play and we were able to put pressure on them, in the end we made the win.”
“It’s a major win for us. If we want to move on, we have to win matches like this. It’s a good start for the tournament and I hope we can produce more wins.”
“We went to the Olympic qualifiers, which was long and gruelling. We played a lot of matches in a short amount of time, we ended up making it in and we played World League Group 2, which we were kind of worried about because we wanted to keep the high level. We were able to keep a high level and here we are.”
Gavin Schmitt, Player of Canada
“We are fairly pleased, it was nice to get some of the jitters out in the first set and open up on a win. It was great to see the guys just performing very well and USA played us tough and we’re happy to come away with the win.”
“For me the motivation to be performing is this right here (pointing to the Canadian flag on his jersey). We’re here to represent Canada and we all want to represent our country well, and we want to prove that we can compete with anybody and we can beat anybody. We are just here to make Canada proud, and play well and get some wins.”
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Canada will play Brazil and USA faces Italy tomorrow.
