Jefferson Hagen
MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – As she continues to produce at an all-star level for the MacEwan Griffins women's volleyball team, Mariah Bereziuk hit a major career milestone in the first set of their 3-0 win over the Regina Cougars on Saturday afternoon.
With her fifth kill, the fourth-year outside hitter reached 500 for her career.
"I think it's pretty exciting," she said after leading the Griffins to a 25-23, 25-19, 25-20 win over Regina to complete a weekend sweep. "It's a cool milestone to hit, but there's always going to be more."
Bereziuk is the sixth Griffins player to reach 500 career kills since MacEwan joined Canada West in 2014.
She's also the 10th Griffin to accomplish the feat in the program's entire history, stretching back through the ACAC era to the 1970s.
"You just look at the time frame she did it in," said MacEwan head coach Chris Wandler. "As a rookie, she didn't play a whole heck of a lot, so she did it in her second, third and fourth years. So, essentially, it's in two-and-a-half years because we're halfway through the season. It's extremely remarkable.
"The last couple of years, the teams rely on her, so she's gotten a lot of volume, but it just goes to show how durable she is, how tenacious she is and just how she just loves to go for it. And it's how much her teammates trust her to do that.
"It's quite the accomplishment on her part."
Bereziuk led MacEwan with 14 kills on Saturday and finished with 27 in just six sets over the weekend as the Griffins stretched their winning streak to four in a row.
She now sits at 509 for her career, which moves her past Hailey Cornelis (501) into fifth on the program's CW career list.
With the win, MacEwan is now 7-3 in the Canada West standings, while Regina falls to 0-10.
"It's a building block for us to move forward into next weekend and into the next semester," said Bereziuk of continuing their winning streak. "So, just keep building and hopefully bring some more wins this season."
Regina was led by Jordy McEachern, who had a match-high 15 kills, while Piper Harkness added seven kills.
Beyond Bereziuk, who impressively hit at a .429 percentage, MacEwan had its most efficient match of the season (.323) with Kara Frith notably hitting .750 on 12 attempts (nine kills). Sarah McGee added four kills, two aces and accounted for five of the Griffins' 10 blocks.
"Again, we kind of had a bit of a hiccup in that first set, but we regained our composure," said Wandler. "We hit over .300, so that's really good. Mariah was .429 with only two errors. We had only eight errors on 99 attempts. That's pretty solid."
As he alluded to, the Griffins got in some trouble in the opening set as Claire Sheppard held court at the serving line for a 6-0 Regina run that put the visitors up 16-11. But the Griffins righted the ship on their passing game in a hurry with a 4-0 run, and then rallied all the way back, winning it 25-23 on a let serve ace by Danielle Jodoin.
"I think it was just a lot of communication," said Bereziuk of how they turned it around. "Bron (Ettinger) and I have been working this last week. We've had some issues communicating in the seams and whatnot and I think that's what it came down was communication and working together."
Kara Frith had an efficient outing with nine kills on a .750 hitting percentage (Eduardo Perez photo).
The Cougars didn't go as quietly as they did on Friday after MacEwan's rebound, putting more pressure on the Griffins with tough serving at various points throughout the final two sets. But MacEwan just had too much to let a little adversity keep them down.
They had comfortable leads in both the final two sets, ending the second on their third set point opportunity after Regina served into the net. The game ended on MacEwan's fourth match point opportunity as McGee crushed a right side kill down the line.
"Just kind of going back to our basics, gathering ourselves and trusting in our abilities," said Wandler of the key to seeing the match out. "It's nothing more than that and just being able to repeat those processes over and over again.
"To Regina's credit, they served the ball very well in those couple of rotations and put us in a little bit of trouble, but good teams rebound, and we did that."
The Griffins will finish the semester in Calgary next weekend as they play a pair of matches at Mount Royal University.
