Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – For the first time in program history, the MacEwan women's volleyball team will host a home playoff weekend.
They weren't even on a court when they realized that goal – their body of work in a 17-7 season that wrapped up last weekend was good enough to secure fourth place in Canada West after Thompson Rivers University lost in straight sets to Trinity Western on Friday night.
TRU also lost 3-1 to TWU on Saturday night to finish the season 16-8 and, as the fifth seed, will visit the Griffins in the opening round starting Thursday. Had they won, it wouldn't have mattered as MacEwan had the sets won vs. sets lost tiebreaker.
"The hosting is really kind of the cherry on top," said MacEwan head coach Ken Briggs, whose team clinched the first playoff spot in program history last month. "Let's be honest, the goal has been to get to the playoffs.
"This team deserves it. I'm really, really excited. They've really deserved it and this year every set did count. All the things that have happened to us in the last month have been great for the university and obviously really good for our program."
Setter Kylie Schubert became the first MacEwan student-athlete ever to win a U SPORTS athlete of the week award last month, libero Rachel Jorvina shattered the Canada West record for most digs in a match and then the team took care of business to get to the post-season for the first time.
"I'm proud of the team," said Briggs. "But I'm really happy because this means everybody can be there, too – all of our coaches, all of the players who've just trained, all our injured players. Everybody can be part of it and that's a big building piece for any program."
MacEwan will host Game 1 of the best-of-three series against the TRU WolfPack on Thursday (6 p.m.), Game 2 on Friday (6 p.m.) and Game 3, if necessary, on Saturday (5 p.m., all games David Atkinson Gym, Canada West TV presented by Co-op).
It's a reward for the group's perseverance because a year ago they suffered the most heartbreaking scenario imaginable – missing the playoffs on the wrong end of a sets won/sets lost three-way tiebreaker.
"When they ended, they took that week off and that was their determination since last March – 'OK, that's what it takes, we've now been through it, now we know what to do,' " explained Briggs. "You always want to believe that, but they proved it.
"They've been solid since Day 1. They started with a heartbreaking loss the very first game of the year, but they rebounded back and took care of things," he continued of rebounding after losing a 2-0 lead at Mount Royal University to lose 3-2 on Oct. 18.
"The top two teams (Trinity Western and MRU) we played in the first three weeks of the season, so you're behind the 8-ball and then you can feel bad. But this team didn't feel bad about themselves. They got on that roll. Once they got through that, they learned a lot. Now it's pretty exciting."
So, the WolfPack will visit the Griffins for the second time this season, just 12 days after they wrapped up a weekend split against one another in the David Atkinson Gym. TRU rallied from 2-0 down on Feb. 7 to win 3-2 before MacEwan swept them 3-0 the next night.
"What's exciting about it is we're two pretty even teams," said Briggs. "Now, it's just going to be performance. It isn't going to be some fancy tactical move that makes it because we know each other quite well.
"We have home court advantage. That's huge when two teams are evenly matched. We're going to sleep in our own beds, we get to train all week instead of having a travel day. I'm pretty excited to start on Thursday."
QUICK SETS … As the regular season wrapped up on Saturday, Jorvina finished as the Canada West digs/set leader for 2019-20 (4.45). She was also tied for second in digs with 374. Both marks are new MacEwan single season records … Haley Gilfillan's 102 blocks were second-best to Saskatchewan's Mandi Fraser (106) and are a career-high ... Schubert finished fifth in assists with 782 – a mark that broke the MacEwan single season record.
