Farm Fresh entered the playoffs battle-ready, but even their meticulous preparation couldn’t close the gap as Akari seized the moment and delivered the biggest upset of the 2025 Premier Volleyball League Reinforced Conference quarterfinals.
Head coach Alessandro Lodi acknowledged that while the top-ranked Foxies could have executed better, the eighth-seeded Chargers simply outplayed them, performing far beyond their seed and riding the momentum of a roller-coaster elimination campaign.
“Competitors were prepared. There are wins and losses, so you can never just assume that you will win,” the Italian head coach said following Farm Fresh’s shocking 26-28, 28-30, 21-25 quarterfinal loss to Akari on Monday.
“I thought we were prepared. We knew the strengths and weaknesses of Akari. And I think today they played really well and they showed more of the strengths and less of the weaknesses,” he added.
(C) PVL Images
Despite entering the knockout stage as the league’s top seed, Lodi stressed that Farm Fresh never once felt — or claimed — to be the best team.
“On our side, for sure, we could have done a few things better. But I need to stress the fact that despite being the number one seed in terms of results in the qualification round, we never felt nor have we ever been the number one team,” Lodi said.
No matter how things unfolded, Lodi has no regrets, highlighting the growth and hard work his squad demonstrated throughout the conference — efforts that were key to securing their best finish in the elimination round.
He added that despite the quarterfinal exit, the lessons learned and experience gained from the conference would serve as a solid building block for Farm Fresh’s campaign next season.
“We are a team that has worked really hard, that has struggled and was able to overcome struggle. We won a lot of games, but we knew that everything we got so far was earned, was not to be taken for granted, and we had to reconquer it every play and every set of every game,” he said.
“Credit to them and we take the lesson. We really value everything that we’ve done so far.”
