The Missouri Valley College men’s volleyball team rallies from a two-set deficit to upend the defending national champions, needing all five sets to defeat Georgetown of Kentucky on Wednesday, April 30 to start round-robin play in the 2025 NAIA Men’s Volleyball National Championship.

The sixth-seeded Vikings fell behind in the first two sets, dropping both to 11th-seeded Georgetown by a score of 25-19. However, the Vikings regrouped, tightening their attacks to and securing more digs to win the third set 25-22. A 25-19 win in the fourth set resulted in the decisive fifth set, where a Davi Azevado kill clinched the final set victory by 15-11.

The Vikings finished the game with an almost 25 percent hitting percentage, posting 70 kills while recording 25 errors. Samuel Essilfie led the way with 20 kills while claiming 15 digs. He also had two of Valley’s three aces. Leonardo Leao led the defense with 26 of Valley’s 84 digs while Lucas Rodrigues provided 36 assists and Matheus Curi added 20.

Missouri Valley will have a chance to advance to the semifinals Thursday when they face third-seed Lawrence Tech of Michigan. The match begins at 10 a.m. Lawrence Tech dropped a five-game match to Georgetown on Tuesday to start pool play.  If the Vikings lose Thursday, teams will need to play tiebreaker matches Friday morning to determine who will play in the national semifinals that afternoon.

The winner of MoValley’s pool will play the winner of Pool B in a national semifinal Friday at 4 p.m. Grand View is the seventh seed in Pool B. They along with Missouri Valley are among the five schools from the Heart of America Athletic Conference who earned bids to the 12-team tournament. Park and Mount Mercy are both in Pool A with top-seed The Master’s of California, while Missouri Baptist have the four-seed atop Pool D.