Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – Coming off a match where they were on the wrong end of the serve, serve-receive battle in a 3-0 loss to Alberta, the MacEwan Griffins women's volleyball team will be going right back to the fundamentals.
Head coach Ken Briggs aims to have a much-improved group heading to Winnipeg this weekend as they attempt to clinch a Canada West post-season spot for the first time in program history and continue to push for a first-round home playoff date.
"It's a little bit of a wakeup call," he said of their passing game breaking down last Saturday. "First contact is still the most important. All the flash and dash doesn't mean anything. Just have to get back to the basics.
"Every week, we spend most of our practice starting with serve, serve-receive. We just did not react well as a group. I just didn't think we were able to compete as hard as we could."
The best thing about sports is a chance to rectify past wrongs is right around the corner and the Griffins have proven to be very adept in that area this season, not only from weekend to weekend but usually within a match.
They'll take a 12-6 record to Winnipeg for matches against the Wesmen (8-10) on Friday (5 p.m. MT) and Saturday (5:45 p.m. MT, both on Canada West TV presented by Co-op).
Already, the Griffins have matched their win total from last season when they went 12-12 and missed out on a playoff spot by coming on the losing end of a three-way sets won/sets lost tiebreaker for the final two positions. They have no intention of making it that close again and currently have a healthy +15 in that tiebreaker department.
That said, they aren't home and cooled yet, learning the hard way that 12 wins isn't always enough to see the post-season. So, they'd dearly love to find their top level against a Winnipeg team that has been playing well and should have some desperation considering they're clinging to the final playoff spot by a thread.
"They've been a really nice story – switch a coach in the summer and he's come in with a really young team, pretty much the whole group back from last year," said Briggs.
"They've played well – split a lot of weekends. They still have to run the gauntlet here at the end, but they've done really well."
The Griffins swept the Wesmen on back-to-back nights at the David Atkinson Gym just over a year ago, so they also have to feel confident in their ability to get the job done this weekend. But to do so, they have to clean up their passing and get back to their MO as one of the toughest serving teams in Canada West.
"I thought they were almost linked on the weekend," said Briggs, whose team committed 23 serving errors with only 13 aces combined in their weekend split versus Alberta. "I felt that as we passed poorly, we backed down. We took away the aggressiveness of our serve because we were scared to make mistakes. That's volleyball, man. It plays with your mind."
The mental game can change quickly for the better, though. Deep down, the Griffins know they have what it takes to play with anybody in the conference.
"Confidence changes between sets," said Briggs. "Everybody knows what to do, but you've got to perform and that's what we plan on doing."
