Listen: When your older sister’s volleyball team is better than yours

A close defeat to the Yukon at the Arctic Winter Games? That sucks. Your sister being the Yukon coach? That just hurts.

After a 25-20 12-25 12-15 defeat – one in which the Yukon roared back after the NWT had looked good for the win – Team NT volleyball player Sanis Villeneuve listened as her sister and Yukon coach Taylor Phillips told a reporter: “I really, really love my sister. But my team beat them.”

Villeneuve’s response?

“I actually like basically crushed them and I feel very mad and sad that we lost to them, because it’s insanely humbling. Who loses to their older sister’s team? It’s not OK. It’s not something that happens normally. God. Yeah, that’s how I feel.”

Phillips says she moved to the Yukon for work, which is how she comes to be coaching that territory’s team while Villeneuve represents the NWT.

Her sister doesn’t see it quite that way.

“She ditched NWT for Yukon. That’s all her fault. She could have been coaching us but she decided to go to Yukon. I’m still mad at her for that. But she knows about that,” declared Fort Smith 17-year-old Villeneuve – a glint in her eye suggesting she just might be overdoing the anger for laughs.

“I was already being all spicy when I walked in,” Villeneuve continued. “I side-eyed her when she tried to hug me. I was not giving her anything.”

“She dodged the high fives and good luck,” added Phillips, describing the customary exchanges between volleyball teams. “She completely swerved it.”

This is the first time the two have faced each other in a competitive situation like this.

As the sisters posed – smiling, despite the rhetoric – for a photograph, Villeneuve said she’s already craving a rematch. The good news is there’ll be one at 6pm local time on Wednesday.

“Go Sanis!” Phillips shouted as they parted ways.

“Don’t go Taylor!” Villeneuve replied.