Over the years, Estonian volleyball powerhouse Saaremaa has broken more than a few Bermudian hearts. Today, though, the boys from the Baltic finally did Bermuda a favour.Bermuda won their first Island Games men’s volleyball medal since 2005, taking bronze after beating Greenland 3-0 in the morning, and then cheering on Saaremaa in the afternoon as the Estonians shattered Faroe Islands’ bronze medal dream with a 3-1 triumph.Saaremaa captured their sixth consecutive Island Games men’s volleyball gold medal with a 6-0 round robin record, while Aland took silver at 5-1.Bermuda, the only team to take two sets off Saaremaa during the tournament, finished at 4-2. Their five-set victory on Monday over the 2011 silver medallists from the Faroes was the pivotal result. The Faroes finished at 3-3 to claim fourth.Bermuda’s team members and supporters were on their feet clapping at match point in Saaremaa’s victory against the Faroes. “It was really difficult to sit there in the stands and cheer on the team that we nearly took down earlier in the tournament,” said the team’s veteran libero Jon Gazzard. “We played them on Monday after beating the Faroes earlier in the day. I’d love to have played them with a day’s rest.”The victory was particularly sweet for Jon, his brother Mike and Gary Leblanc, the three holdovers from the 2005 team that won silver in the Shetland Islands after losing the final to Saaremaa in five sets.“That win over the Faroes really focused our minds. We wanted to end with a medal,” said Leblanc, who has played on the team since Bermuda’s Island Games debut in 2003. “Beating them was a real confidence booster. We have tried to get better and better every Games, and this year we were able to execute.”The team was bolstered by the return of Yves Charbonneau, who took a couple of rest days after becoming dehydrated earlier in the tournament. “I am really happy, I have been on the team since 2003 but I’ve never been able to play in the Island Games before this year,” he said. “I feel 100 percent now. I’m ready to play another match. We played the best volleyball this week that I have ever seen this team play.”Jon said the team had lived up to its motto. “I think we’ll make our motto for this Island Games our motto going forward,” he said. “We said before this tournament ‘when we pass, we win’. We have a strong offence, and a strong defence, so if we pass, we win.”Team captain Mike Gazzard said the key was teamwork. “Half our team are under 25, and half are older so we have a good mix,” he said. “The team played really well this week. We showed that we are a competitive team. I am really proud of how the guys came together. Having the fans come out in such great numbers was great, too. It was really important to have home advantage the fans were our seventh man on the court.“It’s about competing and having fun, and this team does that very well. This week was a lot of fun.”