Day Two Recap: Canada Upsets Team USA Men

Day two of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, brought more anxiety than joy for many USA volleyball fans. Here’s the sum of what went down today.

Team USA’s Results

Overall, today was not a great day for USA volleyball fans.

The biggest disappointment was a loss by the U.S. men to Canada in straight sets. Yes, you heard that right, the world No. 12-ranked Canadians defeated No. 5-ranked USA by scores of 25-23, 25-17, 25-23.

USA struggled in serve receive and with serving, and Canada was out-blocking the Americans 7-2 after the first two sets. Things got a little better in that regard for the Americans, as they put five blocks on the board in the third set, but that didn’t do much to impact the scoreline.

“Hopefully we all fight back for the next match,” USA libero Erik Shoji said. “There’s always jitters in the first match.”

“That’s very uncharacteristic for some of the young players to make some of the errors they did at some of the moments they did,” USA captain David Lee said. “I expect them to be extremely motivated in the matches to come.”

USA women’s beach volleyball players Lauren Fendrick and Brooke Sweat also recorded a loss in their first match in Rio. They came out strong versus Poland’s Kinga Kolosinska and Monika Brzostek, winning the first set by a large margin, but lost the momentum entirely in set two. Set three looked more like set two than set one, and Poland ran away with the three-set win.

Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena’s victory over Tunisia’s Mohamed Arafet Naceur and Choaib Belhaj Salah provided the sole bright spot of the day for USA volleyball fans. They secured a dominant 21-7, 21-13 win.

Upset of the Day

The Canada men beating USA was obviously a big shock, but even more surprising was the triumph of Cuban beach volleyball players Diaz Gomez Nivaldo Nadir and Sergio Reynaldo Gonzalez Bayard over Brazil’s Evandro Goncalves and Pedro Solberg Salgado in three sets (24-22, 21-23, 15-13).

“They are a really strong team and we both played really well,” Diaz said. “Beating a Brazil team in Rio was a good incentive to win and a great result.”

“We don’t see them very often, but they have a very good side-out and they are very athletic, jump high and hit strong,” Pedro said. “We didn’t play good at the net today, they played better and deserved the win.”

Another, only slightly less notable, upset was Mexico’s Juan Virgen and Lombardo Ontiveros victory over Italy’s Paolo Nicolai and Daniele Lupo in three sets, 14-21, 21-14, 15-11.

“First Olympic match, first win, it’s amazing,” Ontiveros said. “We were tense, shaky and anxious in the first set, but we made adjustments for the second set and the wind was super helpful for us.”

Olympic Moments

April Ross doesn’t believe in letting a day off be a day wasted.



Yesterday, Serbia’s Brankica Mihajlovic set a new serving speed record.



Egypt’s Doaa Elghobashy was proud of her Olympic debut, despite a 21-15, 21-13 loss to Germany’s Laura Ludwig and Kira Walkenhorst.

“They are good, but we thought the Olympic teams would be way better than us, but I think we’re ok,” she said. “With more training and facilities, we could be better than them.”

For full results from Sunday's Olympics volleyball action, click here.