Eagles Men’s Volleyball Goes 1-1 in Season Opener Tri-Match

David Finney | photo by Holly Heath

Waleska, GA - After just one scrimmage game with Truett-McConnell last week, the Eagles Men's Volleyball team welcomed in Belmont Abbey and Fort Valley State for an official tri-match Saturday in the Brown Athletic Center. Coach Goodhind and his guys have been preparing for weeks getting ready for this moment and they were ready to go.

Reinhardt vs. Belmont Abbey

The first match of the morning was against Belmont Abbey which came in already having several games behind them on this season. Both teams came out flying high and playing with a lot of intensity. The first set saw the Eagles come out to an early 4-1 lead led by Victor Pacheco and Troy Sly with 6 kills each. Sly had an excellent .500 hitting percentage and had 5 blocks (2 solo). 

The Crusaders of Belmont Abbey would quickly work their way back and take a narrow one-point lead at 11-10. They would move out to a small lead from there getting ahead by 3 points, however, Reinhardt would work their way back to just one point. It would stay like this for the rest of the first set and Belmont Abbey would finish out the first set with a 25-23 win.

Sly and Pacheco would continue blocking and getting kills in the second set and they were helped by Chase Cross who had 3 kills of his own to go along with 9 digs. The set would stay close most of the way, however, the Crusaders were able to pull away at the end and won 25 to 18.

The third set would be very similar to the first except it was Belmont Abbey that would jump out to an early 7-4 lead.  The Eagles would fight back with Leadership from Bruno Dewes who had 15 assists total in the game. After Reinhardt caught back up to the early three-point lead, the Crusaders would pull away slightly gaining a four-point lead.  Reinhardt would battle back, but the closest they would get is three points. Reinhardt would take the loss 25-22 which gave Belmont Abbey the game win.

Reinhardt vs. Fort Valley State

The late afternoon match on Saturday would be the final volleyball game of the day. Just coming off a loss to Belmont Abbey in the middle game, Fort Valley State was eager to get the game against the Eagles going.  All three sets were extremely close and the two teams would try to figure each other out all the way through.

Set One would be a tight one with small runs from each team at different points. Chase Cross and Bruno Dewes would be the leaders again getting through the first set with a narrow 25-23 win. Dewes would have 22 assists and 12 digs on the match and Cross had 6 kills to go along with 2 digs.

The second set would see the Eagles take a more commanding role and they would take advantage of a few serving errors by Fort Valley. Matthew Corrales would have a great game coming off the bench to help the team with 7 kills and a .500 hitting percentage. Nicolas Castro would have another strong match producing 7 digs. The middle set would go in the favor of Reinhardt, 25 to 17.

The final set of the afternoon would be another close one. Reinhardt would get a three-point lead at 8-5 during the set and they would make sure it stayed this way through the final kill. Rayner Sarmiento lead the team with 10 kills and he also had 4 digs and one ace for the match. Fort Valley was never able to break inside the three-point lead by Reinhardt and the Eagles would finish out the, 25-21.

It was a great start for the Eagles and Coach Goodhind will have them improving as a team as the season goes on.  He was excited about getting the seasons going and seeing where his team was at the start. He had this to say about the match,  "Today finally marked our first match of the 2022 Men's season. I am in my 5th season at RU and I've been a part of a lot of firsts here with the volleyball program. One of the things I wasn't expecting to be a part of those firsts was today officially being my first time on the sidelines as the Head Men's Volleyball Coach here at Reinhardt. These guys have been grinding and working hard so it was great to see them get to actually put their new jersey's on and finally get to play an opponent. 

I have to say thank you to Belmont Abbey and Fort Valley for coming out and playing the tri-match. It's great for us to get to play NCAA II competition.

The first match was a tough one, not because we lost but because both Belmont Abbey and we were very sloppy and had no flow. If you told our opponent was going to hit .150 as a team, with 5 aces and 20 services errors...I would feel confident we are winning that match. Unfortunately, we had only 2 aces and 18 service errors of our own and only .063. It was the opposite in match 2. Fort Valley only 1 ace with 19 service errors but we had 5 aces and 10 errors. Our offense still was below what we expect. The service errors from our opponent really helped. What impressed me with Belmont Abbey was that regardless of playing sloppy they had high energy the entire match. You could tell that's a program that has had success and has been around for I think 9-10 years. Where in our side you can tell we are a third-year program that in year three already has a new coach.

With me now taking over on the men's side it's like restarting as we have to restart and establish culture and along the way figure out the strengths and weaknesses of this team. Today we learned a lot about something we need to clean up and I promise anyone that supports us… WE will put the work in to improve those areas!

At the end of the day, if you told me we would go 1-1 today, I would have told you that would be a great start! I was pretty happy with our energy match 2 as the guys did start to find some flow. We may have gone 1-1 but we wake up tomorrow 0-0 and try to go 1-0 the next time we step onto the court! That 1-0 mentality will be one we live by all year. I want to say thank you to God for the blessing of getting to coach these athletes. All the Honor and Glory Goes to Him!"