“Waterloo has been our nemesis for the past two or three years. It was good to put an exclamation mark on that this year.”
Mustang volleyball player Kyle Bryce was certainly happy with his team’s playoff performance on Saturday. Western’s men’s volleyball team advanced to the Ontario University Athletics Final-Four after an intense 3-1 win over the Waterloo Warriors at Alumni Hall. Western will face the second-place Queen’s Gaels in a semifinal match this Saturday.
In their last meeting, Waterloo beat Western 3-2 in what was Waterloo’s last regular season game of the year. The end result of the quarter-final was definitely not what the Warriors were shooting for.
“It’s not what we hoped for,” Waterloo’s head coach Chris Lawson said. “We had what was probably our best week of practice all season, so we were hoping to perform better than we did. A couple of our younger guys played like younger guys today.”
The atmosphere was buzzing in the gym, and Western came out firing on all cylinders as they won the first two sets 27-25 and 25-17. The momentum shifted in the third set with the lead constantly changing, ending with Waterloo taking it 26-24. Western dominated the fourth set and finished Waterloo off, 25-12.
“I was really proud of them,” Mustangs head coach Jim Sage said after the game. “We knew it was going to be a battle. Especially after the third set we were a little worried, but I was really pleased with the way we came out in the fourth set — we dominated and took care of them.”
Both teams came out slow in the beginning, but eventually got over their playoff jitters and settled into a tight game.
Western’s Mathieu Poulin led the attack with 13 kills, eight digs and a solo block, while Matthew Gibson added 43 assists, nine digs and a pair of solo blocks. Mathew Waite also had an impressive 10 kills, four digs and 17 points. On Waterloo’s end Tyler Vivian stood out with 12 kills and three digs.
“I was pretty proud of us,” Mustang Reid Halpenny said after the game. “We came out kind of slow and looked a bit nervous, but we worked it out, got back in the game, and by the end we felt like we were dominating.
The third set is when the game got exciting. Waterloo jumped ahead early but Western kept it close. The teams traded points throughout the entire set, and both played with a lot of grit, tying it up at 22-22. To the delight of the handful of Waterloo fans and the dismay of the rowdy Western crowd, a couple of good plays by Waterloo allowed them to steal the set 26-24.
“I think we just let up a little bit […] I think being up 2-0, we just relaxed,” Sage said. “We stay[ed] confident because we knew we were playing well but we just didn’t have that edge [...] We have to be hungry for every point.”
However, Waterloo didn’t make much of a dent in Western’s style as the ‘Stangs came back to finish off the game with a dominant 25-12 win in the fourth set.
“We started with a young guy making two or three errors in a row and that set the tone for the fourth set and we just couldn’t come back from it,” Lawson said.
“I was proud of our character after the third set,” Mustang veteran Kyle Bryce said. “It was a tough battle in the 20s and we lost but then we came out fired up for the fourth set. We really put it to them.”
Lawson likes Western’s odds heading into the semifinal.
“If they play with that kind of grit I think they’ll have a good shot to beat Queen’s,” Lawson pointed out.
According to Halpenny, the Mustangs won’t only be playing for a shot at an OUA Championship title, but also bragging rights.
“Queen’s is our rival. In every sport, Queen’s and Western is the rivalry.”

Corey Stanford/Gazette