Reds And Tommies Play Five Set Scrimmage

(FREDERICTON, NB) The UNB REDS men’s volleyball team saw their first action in 388 days on Tuesday evening.

The REDS met their cross-campus neighbours, the St. Thomas Tommies of the Atlantic Colleges Athletic Association, in a controlled scrimmage.

“It’s was great to be out here,” said REDS fifth-year hitter Connor McConnell. “We’ve been practicing non-stop. We’ve been fortunate to be able to practice throughout the year and we took advantage of that and have been working hard, and I think some of that showed. We have a really young team, we have some of our senior guys injured, but I think we came out and played well.”

UNB’s 2020-21 RSEQ regular and post seasons, like the Tommies’ seasons, were wiped out by the on-going pandemic.

Tuesday’s match was played at UNB’s Richard J. Currie Center. It featured officials, but was closed to spectators.

“It had that game day feel, even without it being a real game and not having spectators in here,” said REDS third-year setter Brad Merryweather. “Just having our jerseys on and seeing the opposing jerseys that aren’t ours. It felt a little nerve-wracking at the start because it’s such a different experience than playing against each other.”

It was determined, prior to the match, that the teams would play all five sets.

Action was fierce, on both sides of the net, throughout the evening.

Set scores were close, but the REDS did sweep all five.

“We’ve been practicing hard all year and today was our first opportunity to show that we work hard every day,” said Tommies’ third-year libero Brendan Murphy. “We really appreciate the REDS team for having us come out and scrimmage with them.”

“We worked as a team tonight,” said Murphy. “We don’t always have everyone at practice, so even there we can’t play six on six, so it was nice to have the team together.”

It took just under two hours to play the five sets, and both teams left the court smiling, glad to have played a match after more than a year of practice and training.

“I’ll probably feel it tomorrow,” said McConnell. “But we’ve been able to work out in the Canadian Sport Centre Atlantic High Performance Centre for most of the year, so we’ve been keeping in shape, and we’ve been working for this day for 388 days, so it was great to be here.”

RECAP AND PHOTOS BY: Andy Campbell/UNB Athletics