Jefferson Hagen / MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – Five days a week the entire off-season you could pretty much set your watch to an appearance in the MacEwan fitness facility from Jacob McIntyre and his workout partners/Griffins men's volleyball teammates Jonathan Mohler and Jordan Peters.
Together they held each other accountable. Together they raised their fitness levels to new heights.
And the results are paying off on the court, too, particularly for McIntyre, who rarely saw any action in the first two seasons of his Canada West career but found himself starting in the Griffins' home opener last month against the University of Alberta Golden Bears.
"I had a rough first two years," said the product of Edmonton's Strathcona High School. "It didn't really go well. I had a knee kind of go. In my second year, I had back issues and I didn't perform. I was pretty frustrated.
"At the end of my (last season), I kind of thought to myself, I either have to do this right or not at all. I was on the verge of 'should I keep doing this? Is my investment in time coming back?' I really just decided I have to go all out in the summer. I was going to give it one last try because I wasn't ready to just give up on it yet. So, that's what I did."
Now McIntyre has gone from a bit-part player who travelled only occasionally with the Griffins to one who's forcing himself into the conversation for starting minutes in the middle. Yes, he started against Alberta because Max Vriend missed the weekend with a concussion, but his performance did nothing to dissuade head coach Brad Poplawski from giving him a regular run in the rotation moving forward.
"To play that position at this level, you have to be a big, strong person," said Poplawski. "He's got the frame and the size, so he really invested in himself. Basically, since our season ended until training camp, he was here five days a week lifting. It was pretty awesome to see. It's all because of his hard work that he's put himself in the conversation.
"It's inspiring when you see a guy work that hard and I think his teammates see it, too."
McIntyre will lead the Griffins into a weekend series against visiting UBC-Okanagan (Friday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, 6:30 p.m., both games Atkinson Gym). How much he plays remains to be seen, but it's clear he's one of Poplawski's go-to guys early in the season.
He not only credits his work in the gym, but also his mental approach.
"Coming in this year, mentally, I just changed my view," McIntyre explained. "I was always very outcome oriented. I wanted those minutes, I wanted this and that. I don't know what shifted it, but I stopped worrying about the outcome and just kind of played. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen. If it wasn't, it wasn't.
"I think it's in the best mental state that it's been in in my career," he continued. "It's allowed me to perform and the physical attributes I gained in the summer are helping me go through it. It's definitely paying dividends. I don't think I've earned a spot yet, but I think I put my foot in the door and that's really all you can ask for in this league is an opportunity, especially a guy like me coming off the bench."
While that attitude is proving to be an inspiration to teammates, McIntyre draws his from his deep-rooted volleyball-playing family, which includes younger brother Aiden, a rookie setter at Keyano College this season. He also had two uncles who played post-secondary volleyball and some cousins, most notably Parker and Jackson Maris, who played for Red Deer College and the University of Calgary, respectively. The latter is now playing pro in Sweden.
"I don't want to say it's a rite of passage, but it's just a family thing. We love it and it's just a great game," he said.
"I'm happy for (Jackson) that he got to (turn pro) because he worked really hard. It's definitely something you look to as motivation, too, off the court."
The Griffins (0-4) will be searching for their first win of the season against UBCO (1-5), but it certainly won't be an easy task.
"They have a couple of guys that can really serve the ball well," said Poplawski. "They have three spin servers that put teams under a tremendous amount of pressure. They have a lot of different lineups they can potentially give you, so you have to prepare for a bunch of different guys.
"They're coming off a weekend where they played a very good Mount Royal team and won in five and lost in five," he added. "They're coming in with a lot of confidence, so we're going to have to do a good job passing, first off, and doing a good job in the serve-pass game."
