Jefferson Hagen
MacEwan Athletics
CALGARY – This time, it was the play of Arden Butler off the bench that made the difference for the MacEwan Griffins women's volleyball team as they extended their winning streak to five in a row with a 3-1 victory over the Mount Royal University Cougars on Friday night.
In each of their recent wins, there has always been a small hiccup they've had to overcome, usually by subbing in somebody off their bench, and Friday was no different.
The Griffins found themselves down 1-0 in the match after a listless opening set sent them to a 25-17 defeat.
Butler came in and changed the dynamic, as MacEwan rolled to a 17-25, 25-17, 25-23, 25-22 victory that pushes their record to 8-3 in the Canada West standings. MRU falls to 2-9.
"Arden came in and was a difference maker tonight," said MacEwan head coach Chris Wandler. "She really was on fire. We had a really good matchup with her on the outside.
"Payton set her some good balls in some good situations and Arden took advantage of it. She hit .400 tonight. That was pretty amazing."
Butler finished with 15 kills, a service ace, four digs and a block, accounting for 16.5 points. Mariah Bereziuk led the Griffins with 17 kills and 18.5 points, while Payton Shimoda had 44 assists – the second-highest total of her career.
MRU was led by Emma Boyd, who had 12 kills, three aces, six blocks and accounted for 18.0 points.
The Cougars served the Griffins tough with 12 aces and jumped on them early in the first set.
"It seemed like we were a little bit too anxious, and we weren't ourselves in that first set," said Wandler. "It was pretty ugly. Slowly in that first set, we started to find a few pieces of ourselves.
"We had a nice little chat about playing ugly volleyball about how we have the tools to do that as well. There are different ways to win. We worked through those and started to get more in the rhythm of our game.
"We had a slow start, but Mount Royal played really well and forced our hands on some things. We just took our game back and kind of rolled from there."
And they did it with contributions from across the lineup.
"Ella Black came on in the fourth set and dug a hell of a ball and really kind of crushed the dreams of Mount Royal at a key moment," said Wandler. "And then we started to pass the ball better. Our outside hitters really started to connect. It kind of grew from there."
The teams will meet again on Saturday (5 p.m., Canada West TV).
