June 28, 2022: Team Canada opened Week 3 of the 2022 Volleyball Nations League (VNL) at the 7 Chiefs Sportsplex on Tsuut’ina Nation, near Calgary, Alberta, with a big victory over Türkiye, winning 3-1 (25-22, 21-25, 25-22, 25-23).

The game was a hard-fought, tight match from the opening serve, with leads going back and forth throughout the game. The win is Canada’s fourth of VNL, bringing their record to 4-5, and puts them in ninth place with three games to go. 

“There’s a few teams this season that we always love to play and Turkey is one of them. They’re really high energy, even last year at VNL we had a really fun match with them, we weren’t able to pull off the win, but this is really big for us,” said Alexa Gray, who is from Calgary. “It’s not a team that we expected to win against but we’re really excited about how we played tonight, excited to see our team bounce back from kind of a disappointing week last week.”

Gray led the Canadians in scoring, collecting 22 points. Kiera Van Ryk was right behind her, putting 20 points up on the board.

Explained head coach Shannon Winzer: “I thought we did a really good job of getting after our best serves and we were able to put Turkey out of system, and get them into some difficult situations and when you put a big team like that who have some really great point scorers it gives you an opportunity to dig the ball and score some break points. I think our service was key.”

Canada now has two days off before facing off in a Canada Day match on July 1 against Team Serbia at 8 pm MT.

Earlier in the day, Serbia opened up Week 3 of VNL with a 3-1 (17-25, 25-16, 25-21, 25-18) win over Germany.

Tomorrow will see Japan battle Team Netherlands at 5 pm MT, followed by Belgium versus the United States at 8 pm.

Roster (week 3):

#13 Brie King, Surrey, BC
#12 Jennifer Cross (Captain), Scarborough, ON
#19 Emily Maglio, Coquitlam, BC
#6 Jazmine White, Oshawa, ON
#14 Hilary Howe, Calgary, AB
#11 Andrea Mitrovic, Mississauga, ON
#9  Alexa Gray, Calgary, AB
#16 Caroline Livingston, Kelowna, BC
#3  Kiera Van Ryk, Surrey, BC
#25 Sydney Grills, Vancouver, BC
#5 Julia Murmann, Toronto, ON
#8 Alicia Ogoms, Winnipeg, MB
#20 Arielle Palermo, Burlington, ON
#10 Courtney Baker, Bridgewater, NS

• Tickets: www.showpass.com

Volleyball Canada Media Contact:
Jackie Skender
jskender@volleyball.ca
Mobile: 613-794-7676

Tournament web site:
https://en.volleyballworld.com/volleyball/competitions/vnl-2022