Jefferson Hagen / MacEwan Athletics

EDMONTON – As if Haley Gilfillan needed any more confirmation that her choice to come to MacEwan was the right one, she found out her great uncle designed the university's iconic towers.

"I didn't really know that," chuckled the third-year middle on the Griffins women's volleyball team. "I found out about it when I decided to come to MacEwan. It's pretty cool."

Her late great uncle Jim Wensley ran a successful architecture business in Edmonton, not only designing MacEwan's trademark flourish but several notable Edmonton buildings, including the Shaw Conference Centre.

So, it was as if Gilfillan was born to represent the university. It's just that her choice of sport doesn't really follow the family business.

She's the lone volleyball player in a family that has basketball in its blood; grandparents Jim Gilfillan and Carol Wensley played for the University of Alberta hoops squads, cousin Connor Foreman plays for the University of Calgary Dinos and another cousin plays for the University of Alberta-Augustana in Camrose.

She could easily also have taken up a number of other sports, considering her grandfather on the other side – Ken Little – is in the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame for multiple sporting accomplishments, including curling after representing the province at the Brier.

"I think I've done it once and I was six years old," said Gilfillan. "I sat on the rock as my dad threw me down the ice. That's about as far as I went with curling. Not really my sport."

The Griffins are fortunate she chose volleyball because her play has been elite so far this season. Gilfillan came into the fall in the best shape of her life, was named MVP of a preseason tournament in Winnipeg last month and carried that play into the 2017-18 Canada West season.

The middle will lead the Griffins into a pair of weekend home matches against visiting UBC-Okanagan (Friday, 6 p.m. and Saturday, 5 p.m., both games Atkinson Gym).

"This past summer was the hardest I've ever worked," she said. "I really wanted to come out and show the coaches that I deserved to be on the court and want to help my team make it to playoffs and take us as far as we can go. I feel like that's where my motivation came from."

So far this season, Gilfillan has 19 kills in four matches, hitting at .250 efficiency and leads the team with 17 blocks and nine service aces. It's the type of multi-category production that head coach Ken Briggs can depend on.

"Offensively, that part of her game has really picked up," he said. "She has been a very solid blocker/defender in the past. And she's, of course, better at that this year with more court sense. She's adding the offensive part to it. Now I can flip her between the M1 and M2 position. She can play either because she now has all the shots.

"She's one of our best servers and probably one of our most dependable (players). She's solid. She takes care of business."

Gilfillan was a major reason why the Griffins almost upset reigning USPORTS silver medalist Alberta last weekend, taking the Pandas to five games. She held her own in the middle against some of the top players at the position in Canada West. She'll have to repeat that again as the UBCO Heat bring a ton of strength to the position, as well, led by 6-foot-5 Aidan Lea, who is under Team Canada's development umbrella.

"With a middle being that tall, they're going to have to set the ball a little higher and it's not going to be as quick as the middle that we run," said Gilfillan. "So, my biggest focus on that is to make sure when blocking that I don't jump with her because she's going to get up there. You have to take a second and focus on the timing.

"That's what we're going to have to focus on and hope that we get a lot of positive touches and the defence is right there behind us like they usually are."

Added Briggs: "This is a good test for (our middles), but more so for our whole team. If we pass well, we can use our middles. No matter how big girls are, most of the time in the middle it's one on one. It's a hard thing to stop a middle when the passing is really good.

"You beat people in the middle because of your timing and that comes with the passing."