Men handle test on court
No different than a lifelong rink rat growed-up enough to cross composite swords with Sidney Crosby or a moppet who went to bed at night hugging his scuffed football suddenly awaking to adulthood on the Camp Nou pitch, Lionel Messi in full pomp slaloming toward him, wriggling past defenders as easily as a snake sheds its skin.
“I’ve been watching video of guys like Dante,” marvels Calgary’s Rudy Verhoeff, “since I was 12.”
The Dante in question would be Dante Guimarães Santos do Amaral, 32-yearold Brazilian outside hitter who has collected among his gluttonous competitive haul three Olympic medals and three golds at World Championships. Often cited as the fiercest spiker on the face of the earth, in the game of volleyball he is legend.
So, yessir, that’s quite a step up from the floor at Trinity Western out in Langley, B.C.
At the recently staged World League of Volleyball at Mar del Plata, Argentina, though, Verhoeff and his countrymen experienced what might soon be looked back upon fondly as a competitive epiphany.
In an unprecedented run all the way up to the semifinals, with Rio and the next Summer Olympics winking ahead on the horizon, the young Canadian senior men succeeded in scraping away many of their inhibitions. And much of their awe. “We went in,” says Verhoeff, “thinking ‘Yeah, we’re playing good but, oh man, how are we going to fare against the top teams?’ A lot of us had never been in that type of situation before. This is my first year on the team, and so many things run through your mind: It’ll be a lot faster than we think. Can we keep up? Can we handle it?”
I’ve been watching video of guys like Dante
RUDY VERHOEFF
“But then you get out on the floor, the game starts and it’s like ‘Hey, it’s only volleyball.’ They’re very, very good players but they’re only human, too.
“Sure, some of them are really tall and powerful, they’ve done a lot of amazing things and deserve respect for what they’ve achieved, but they’re capable of making mistakes just like we are.”
The Canadians rallied to stun reigning Olympic champion — and world No. 2 — Russia (becoming in the process only the second nation in World League ever to bounce back after dropping the first two sets against them). After opening the competition an indifferent 2-2, they reeled off a seven-match winning streak before tumbling 3-0 in the semifinal to that man Dante and the top-rated Brazilians.
The Russian match is one that could mark a turning point. Despite dropping first two sets 20-25 and 21-25, coach Glenn Hoag’s bunch never let their heads drop and, in virtually impossible fashion, stormed back 25-23, 25-21 and 15-11. In the wake of the stunner, the team dedicated its incredible victory to those affected by the flood disaster here in Alberta and the tragic train derailment in LacMegantic, Que.
An overall fifth-place finish was two spots higher than the Canadians had ever before achieved in World League and rocketed them up seven placings in the FIVB World Rankings, from No. 18 to 11.
“It means a tremendous amount,” says middle hitter Verhoeff, “but at the same time it just reveals where we are. How close and also how far. We wanted to measure ourselves against the best teams in the world and we got the chance to do that. So now we kind of know ‘OK, we are close, but we still have a tremendous amount of work to do for our goal of Rio 2016.
“To an outside observer, the difference between teams might seem very, very small. But we know as we aim higher and higher that these small improvements is what we need to work on, improve on, and that’s going to take a lot of work.
“What sets those top countries apart is consistency. They always bring their top game. We have great moments, great matches. Even in the Russian match, we played well at some points, very poorly at others. We have to play our top game all the time because that’s what it takes to beat the big teams.
“We have a lot of time before Rio, though, and that gives us time to iron these things out, to make that little jump.”
For that incisive degree of finetuning, they turn to Hoag, of Sherbrooke, Que., now in his seventh year in charge of construction.
Might this be their time? Verhoeff admits that being a part the senior setup is, at the moment, fairly intoxicating.
“For me, for a lot of us, it’s really exciting. I’ve grown up in the junior program, so I’ve been around, but now to be able to step out on the floor with the ‘A’ team ... Glen has built this amazing program all the way through. He’s the reason there are so many young guys making an impact because he puts so much importance on the junior program, the training centre, all these things.
“He’s just one of the top coaches in the world. He knows what it takes.”
And now, after the incredible fightback against Russia, the stirring seven-match win streak, the facing up to the big boys, his young group is just beginning to understand, as well.
They’ve scraped away those inhibitions. And the awe. “What’s nice,” says Verhoeff, “is that this is essentially the beginning of a new quad. There are a lot of new faces on our team, not just me. We’re all looking forward to getting back in the gym and training harder.
“It (the World League success) was a huge step for our program. Huge. We now realize that we can compete with, and beat, these countries.
“We realize we can dream big, too.”