Langley’s Brie King was a standout as Canada beat Serbia in women’s volleyball action Saturday, June 12.
Canada defeated Serbia 3-1 (25-21, 22-25, 25-21, 25-18) for the women’s team’s third Volleyball Nations League (VNL) win of the tournament in Italy.
“Today we played well,” said head coach Shannon Winzer. “We got shaky early on in serve receive, but we came back and did a better job finding consistency on first contact.
READ ALSO: Langley’s Trinity Western University sends four to Olympic volleyball team
“There were some solid performances all-round; Brie (King) set a great game and put our hitters in good situations and our hitters delivered. It was also really nice to see six rotations of aggressive serving from the baseline and in the fourth set, I think that was key to not allowing Serbia to find any rhythm.”
After a strong start in VNL that included wins over China and Germany, Canada struggled in the third portion of play, so today’s win was a confidence boost at the beginning of this phase.
READ ALSO: A record-setting streak for Trinity Western women’s volleyball team
King said the team just”wanted to just shake off after the last couple of games and play really free and I think we did it tonight. Serbia are an awesome team and they pushed us, and I think that we were all together and you could feel it in the way we played tonight. All our attackers did a really good job being aggressive. You can tell that we were not shying away from the big moments, but taking big swings, which gave us all the confidence that we had to take a win in this game right from the very beginning.”
Serbia is a traditional powerhouse in volleyball, including an Olympic silver medal in 2016 and the gold at the last World Championship in 2018. This is the Canadian women’s team’s first appearance in VNL.
Canada’s Kiera Van Ryk continues to dominate in scoring, leading today with 21 points, and is at the top of the charts for the whole tournament in scoring and attacking.
Is there more to the story? Email: news@langleyadvancetimes.com
