Canadian volleyball team finds success in legacy they leave behind

RIO DE JANEIRO - Canada qualified five teams to this Rio Olympics, each of them with a different definition of success.

In women’s soccer, it’s back to the podium after their gold-medal hopes went begging. The inaugural women’s rugby sevens side immediately tossed a marker down with a bronze medal. In women’s basketball, the target was a medal game, but their tournament ended a failure at least in those terms after Tuesday’s quarter-final loss to France. Men’s field hockey, another side just happy to have got here, found their high-water moment in a 1-1 draw with mighty Argentina, a team with whom they have some history, but usually inside the cosier Pan Am Games.

For the men’s volleyballers, this was it, or at least what it sounded like: a tired, 3-0 quarter-final loss to Russia, and reserve middle blocker Justin Duff making his way off the Maracanazinho floor greeted by a chorus of shouts from the crowd -- some Canadians, yes, and waving the Maple Leaf, but a lot of Brazilians too, there just for a sport that’s considered second to only the national obsession of soccer.

“These fans, they’re great here,” Duff marveled. “They love you. I just walked past them maybe breaking hearts. Everyone’s going ‘selfie,’ ‘selfie,’ ‘selfie.’ It’s nice to feel that.

“We feel that when we play a tournament at home some, but people here are much more knowledgeable about the sport. They’re sending me messages, even offering tactics.”

Duff and his teammates qualified in Japan a little over two months ago, winning a tournament for the last spot remaining in the Rio field. They were drawn with some heavyweights, including an assignment in Carioca prime time -- a 10:30 p.m. start -- that jammed the little brother stadium to the mighty Maracana next door. The Canadians lost that one, but in an environment similar save for the locals adopting them as their own, waving along with every “Monster Block, Monster Block, Monster Monster Monster Block” celebrated over the hyperactive game ops, as they opened their tournament by beating the heavily favoured United States.

Before the night that made their tournament a success - a must-win against Italy Monday in which they exited 3-1 victors, setting up this quarter-final - coach Glenn Hoag’s pregame instructions included an e-mail he’d received from a 14-year-old back home in Canada.

“He said he wanted to play for Team Canada - ‘I do this well, and can you write to me after you win the Olympics?’ I read it to the guys and said this is your legacy you’re leaving behind.

“Right now, I’d say we did a lot, and we hope to do more in the future - I think that’s the way to look at it -- How they did it, what they did, the journey, the adventures, the misadventures, ups and down. So many.”

At Olympics team events, there are no classification games a la world championships. So this Canadian team goes down as a joint fifth place in their first Olympics since 1992 (among the Russians opposite Wednesday was 40-year-old captain Sergey Tetyukhin, who hasn’t missed one of these since Atlanta 1996).

“We had a pool here with four gold medal contenders in Brazil, Italy, France and the USA,” said Duff. “If you had have asked almost anyone, including even a couple of us, if we’d make it to the quarter-finals, they’d say ‘uhhhh, not likely.’”

Gavin Schmitt, the cornerstone striker who struggled to get here after winter surgery for a stress fracture in his right leg, struggled to look at the bigger picture. “How far we went in this tournament, it’s a nice accomplishment,” he said. “But it still stings right now.”  

The bigger picture starts now, with at least one hole to fill with 10-year head coach Hoag moving on, and Schmitt’s injury issues making him iffy for another quadrennial to try to repeat or even better this experience.

That’s success, too - a moving target, and as varied as the sports they play.