Jefferson Hagen
MacEwan Athletics

EDMONTON – Among the baby steps of growth for this young Griffins women's volleyball team, this is an important one.

They took a set off the No. 1-ranked team in U SPORTS on Saturday night.

Although the full result was another loss, their eighth-straight to start the 2021-22 season, the Griffins gave the Alberta Pandas a challenge before falling 3-1 (25-13, 23-25, 25-17, 25-16).

"In that second set, we had complete control at the end and played really well," said MacEwan head coach Ken Briggs. "You know, we had those moments in volleyball where everything's in system, everything's right, everybody's doing their job.

"Then for the other three sets, it was a lot of really tremendous play with a lot of errors – kind of 50-50 again. But we had longer stretches in all four sets. It was nice to take control several times, follow a game plan, make some changes in mid-stream, which is nice."

Erica Bolink led the Griffins with 15 kills and nine digs, while middle Sarah McGee had 10 kills on .318 efficiency and accounted for 14.5 points. Rookie setter Payton Shimoda impressed for the second-straight night with 31 assists.

"Sarah had just a tremendous game in the middle – both blocking and hitting," said Briggs. "We had some big numbers from Erica. It shows she's swinging and learning.

"Payton set another really great game. Just as a group, there are just longer moments of good things that we're working on.

Now the challenge for the Griffins will be to build on that momentum with a long break looming. They next see action on the road at Mount Royal University on Jan. 21-22.

"Now everything shuts down for a month, but we're miles ahead of where we were two months ago when we had our first preseason competition in the first week of October," said Briggs. "We've come so far and we have a long ways to go, but it was a nice way to end – to compete and push right till the very last point."