Jason Hills
For MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON — Mistakes are part of volleyball, but when they're self-inflicted they hurt a whole lot more.
The MacEwan women's volleyball team felt the brunt of that against the University of Calgary Dinos in a 3-0 loss (27-25, 25-17,25-17) Friday night at the David Atkinson Gym.
Too many unforced errors cost the Griffins from earning their first win of the Canada West season.
First-year middle Sarah McGee led the Griffins with six kills and two digs, while second-year outside hitter Mariah Bereziuk and first-year outside hitters Erica Bolink and Rachel Perry all had five kills each. Bereziuk led MacEwan with nine digs in the loss.
Fourth-year outside hitter Kenzie Vaandering led the Dinos with 17 kills and six digs in the win, as Calgary improves to 5-12, while the Griffins are 0-17 as they committed 25 attack errors in the loss.
"Losing that first set hurt, but we still had lots of energy going into the second. We knew the game was in our hands, but in the last two sets, it was all of our own mistakes that were killing us. Every time we had possession, it was our own errors that ended up costing us." said Griffins' third-year libero Megan Foxcroft.
"We started to make too many mistakes, and it just compounded from there. We got more panic in our game, and we were trying to win the whole game at once, and you can't do that."
MacEwan battled back to tie the opening set several different times, and they looked poised to earn that first set win.
After falling behind 19-15, the Griffins came back to take the lead 24-23 after a big block from Dana Dunbar and Arden Butler. After the Dinos took a 25-24 lead, Dunbar and Butler came up with another block, but the Dinos were able to finish off the Griffins late in the opening set with kills from Vaandering and Regan Ingram.
The opening set loss seemed to spark the Dinos, while it shook the confidence of the Griffins as Calgary was flawless in their attack, as they only had one attack error, compared to 11 from MacEwan in the second set.
Despite recording eight service errors the second set, the Dinos were in full control as they were able to capitalize on virtually every mistake the Griffins made.
"They simply were giving us the ball (in the second set), and we didn't take advantage of it," said Foxcroft.
"We had a great chance to get that win tonight, but we let nerves get the best of us. We were super anxious the whole game and never got settled in."
In the third set, Calgary virtually led the whole way. MacEwan always seemed to be in striking distance, but couldn't get any momentum going their way to overtake the Dinos.
Perry had a strong third set for the Griffins, recording two kills and two blocks. Her second block of the set, made it 14-11, but Calgary was able to go on a 7-2 run afterwards, putting it out of reach for MacEwan.
The Griffins had aspirations of winning their first game of the season, this weekend, and the weekend series opener had to be a tough pill to swallow for the young Griffins squad.
"Every game is a learning opportunity, and I think every game, the thing that's hurt us the most is we've had to try and continually learn as we play," said Foxcroft.
"It comes down to us not being able to learn on the fly and change things as we're playing, which is frustrating.
"Tomorrow, we need to implement our game plan throughout the entire match, not just for a set and adapt when things aren't going our way."
MacEwan will wrap up their weekend series and their Canada West regular season on Saturday against Calgary (5 p.m., David Atkinson Gym, Canada West TV presented by Co-op).
