LJUBLJANA \u2014 The Canadian men’s volleyball team fell 3-1 to a Serbian team desperate to avoid relegation in Volleyball Nations League on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Serbia’s (15-25, 25-22, 25-18, 25-22) victory over the Canadians assured the Serbians a berth in next year’s Nations League with a ranking of 15th out of 18 participating countries.<\/p>\n
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Canada, ranked 14th with a record of 4-7, will also return to Nations League in 2026. The Canadians wrap the VNL preliminary round Sunday against Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Canada dominated the Serbians in the first set, but the latter adjusted to pull out the victory.<\/p>\n
Serbia led in attack points (53-50), aces (4-3) and made fewer errors (26-29). Canada had the more effective block (8-4).<\/p>\n
“We have to execute at a higher level if we want to be able to compete internationally,\u201d observed Canadian head coach Dan Lewis.<\/p>\n
“The statistics in general were not that bad, plus minus was good overall, but we didn\u2019t have enough serving pressure on them and our attack dropped to a level that\u2019s not sufficient enough to compete at a high level.<\/p>\n
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“We\u2019re not digging enough balls and we\u2019re not presenting ourselves with enough block positive and slow down transition opportunities and this has been a theme for some of our matches. We need to improve on this if we\u2019re going to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brodie Hofer of Langley, B.C., (15 points), Isaac Heslinga of Orangeville, Ont., (14 points), and Toronto’s Xander Wassenaar Ketrzynski (11) led scoring for Canada.<\/p>\n
Serbia’s Drazen Luburi\u0107 led all scorers with 20 points (18 kills and 2 aces)<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 19, 2025.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LJUBLJANA \u2014 The Canadian men’s volleyball team fell 3-1 to a Serbian team desperate to avoid relegation in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,9149,9147,44,9148,944],"class_list":{"0":"post-8823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mens-volleyball-team","11":"tag-nations-league","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-serbia","14":"tag-the-canadian-press"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}