Record crowd in Quebec City watches Canada fall to France in men's Volleyball Nations League

The Canadian Press

· Posted: Jun 15, 2025 9:17 AM EDT | Last Updated: 2 minutes ago

The fans broke a record, but Canada came up conscionable abbreviated successful Volleyball National League enactment connected Saturday astatine Centre Videotron successful Quebec City.

More than 12,030 spectators watched Canada autumn to France 3-2 successful the best-of-five match, including the tense 15-6 tiebreaker. The instrumentality number is the largest assemblage the Canadian elder men's squad has entertained connected location soil, and is simply a VNL North American record.

Brodie Hofer and Xander Wassenaar Ketrzynski led the scoring for Canada with 15 points apiece. France's skipper Trevor Clevenot, portion of the Paris 2024 gold-medal winning team, led each scorers with 24 points.

WATCH | Canadian men autumn abbreviated against France:

"We fto the crippled gaffe distant from us, I think, we played good and maintained a beauteous bully level, but I don't deliberation this is anyplace adjacent our maximum capabilities," said Canada skipper Fynn McCarthy. "We played a beauteous bully coagulated basal level but that's not bully capable against France.

"[Trevor] Clevenot benignant of ran distant with it successful the extremity and he's a truly bully player, truthful recognition to him, but we should beryllium doing a amended occupation against his work unit ... I'm arrogant of the guys. Lots of our guys person ne'er played successful beforehand of assemblage similar that truthful it was amazing."

France, which won the VNL rubric past year, led wide successful onslaught points (72-67), blocks (8-4) and made a mates less errors. Canada led successful aces 5-2.

Canada's caput manager Dan Lewis said: "I'm highly arrogant of the guys, they ne'er discontinue and they are increasing with each game. We request a bully commencement successful the 5th and marque amended choices. But it's large that we're learning to execute astatine a higher level connected a regular basis. I'm ace proud."

Watch unrecorded sum of Canada's adjacent lucifer against Bulgaria connected CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem, starting Sunday astatine 6 p.m. ET. For a afloat streaming docket of volleyball events this season, click here.

WATCH | Full lucifer replay — France vs. Canada: