Jason Hills, For MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON — There's digging yourself a hole, and then there's the hole that the MacEwan Griffins dug themselves into against the Mount Royal Cougars.
Slow starts plagued the young Griffins squad in a straight-sets loss (25-18, 25-14, 25-16) Friday night at the David Atkinson gymnasium.
MacEwan failed to gain a lead through the opening two sets, and held the lead just twice (2-0 and 4-3 in the third set) as the Griffins were stuck in chase mode all night long.
Rachel Perry and Dana Dunbar led the Griffins with six kills each in the loss, while Hailey Roe led the Cougars with 10.
Perry chipped in with four digs, while Madison Marshall led Mount Royal with 13 digs.
MacEwan fell to 0-5 this season, while Mount Royal improved to 3-2.
"I thought we were better, but we're still trying to find that consistency," said Griffins head coach Ken Briggs.
"We're starting to make the right mistakes, but there's never a good time for that. It's not one, we put two or three together and that's why we were always chasing from behind. It was evident tonight."
MacEwan was missing their biggest offensive threat in second-year outside hitter Mariah Bereziuk, which forced Briggs to juggle his lineup, and Perry came up big in her first-career start for the Griffins in the loss.
"I thought we passed well enough to run an offence, and we had to have some girls really step up, and I thought Rachel came in and really had a solid game blocking and swinging for us," said Briggs.
MacEwan fell behind big early and had to claw their way back into the first two sets, but key errors at bad times stymied the Griffins of gaining any momentum away from Mount Royal.
The Griffins closed the gap to 9-7 in the opening set, but then the Cougars went on a 9-3 run to break it wide open.
In the second set they fell behind 7-1, before finding their footing. The battle back to close it to 10-7, but then got outscored 15-7 the rest of the way.
A bad serve or bad pass seemed to always come back to bite them.
MacEwan got off to a much better start in the third set, but Mount Royal relied on the experience of fifth-year setter Quinn Pelland to turn it around. She led the Cougars with 28 assists, and after MacEwan took a 4-3 lead, Mount Royal went on a big run.
They turned the small deficit into an 8-4 lead. They'd later go on a 4-0 and 5-0 run to take a commanding 18-10 lead, before finishing off the Griffins in the third set 25-16.
"I feel more positive about tonight. It was another 3-0 loss, but we're starting to do the right things," said Briggs.
"Some of our girls rose to the occasion, but our girls are still nervous, and it will be that way until they can get their confidence up, and we're trying to build that up."
