2026-27 Season Preview: Gryphons Women’s Volleyball

GUELPH, Ont. – On Friday night (Oct. 30), the Guelph Gryphons women’s volleyball team takes to the court at the Guelph Gryphons Athletics Centre to get the 2026-27 OUA regular season underway when they host the York Lions. The OUA women’s volleyball regular season format sees 15 teams in one division playing 20 matches with the top 8 teams in the OUA standings qualifying for the postseason. The playoff format remains unchanged as the quarterfinals and semifinals are a single elimination game before it wraps up the Quigley Cup championship game on March 12, 2027. The Gryphons qualified for the playoffs a season ago after posting an impressive regular season record of 14-6, and will now look to return to the OUA postseason for a second consecutive season.

“We are a really talented team, but also a very young group overall,” says head coach Natasha Spaling who enters her second season leading the University of Guelph women’s volleyball program and last season’s OUA Coach of the Year. “There will be opportunity for our younger athletes to gain some significant experience at the OUA level, and a key to success for our team will be finding a way to be consistent on a day-to-day, game-to-game basis.”
 

Ainsley Preszcator leads the outside hitter group for the Gryphons this season. Preszcator, a third-year applied human nutrition major, last season had 123 kills and 83 digs in 16 games played. Yaisa Sealy projects as a starter for the upcoming season with the second-year outside hitter from Etobicoke, ON set to take on a bigger role in her sophomore campaign. Sloane Fortin, a third-year psychology major, is back with the Gryphons after recording 90 kills in 10 games last season and was a member of the 2024-25 OUA All-Rookie Team.

Standout middle blocker, Brooke Preszcator, returns for her third season and takes on a leadership role as a team captain. The human kinetics major from Vienna, Ontario led the team with 53 blocks and was second on the team with 194.5 points, 126 kills and 27 serving aces. Preszcator turned it on to close out last season, recording 48.5 points and 21 total blocks in her final three games of the 2025-26 regular season. Alexandra Nicholson-Clarke is also a key presence for the Gryphons at middle blocke and now enters her fourth season at Guelph as she finished last season with 129.5 points, 94 kills and was second on the team with 42 blocks. Second-year middle blocker Alessia Pereira, an environmental engineering major from Mississauga, is poised for a more significant role this season and was named the team’s Rookie of the Year last season. One of the strengths of the Gryphs heading into the season is at setter with the duo of second-year standout Maya Slavcev and returning team captain Sophie Sommerfeldt. Maya Slavcev, an animal biology major from Kitchener, saw time at setter last season and impressed recording 138 assists in her 12 matches played. Sommerfeldt, a human kinetics major from Whitby, was 4th in the OUA last season with 573 assists and led the conference averaging 9.24 assists per set. Incoming rookie, Kristen Huebel, is set to be the team’s libero for the upcoming season. Huebel, a biological science major from Markham, won a gold medal for Team Ontario at the Canada Summer Games in the summer of 2025 in Newfoundland. Huebel is one of six new players joining the Gryphons women’s volleyball program this season with five true freshman and one incoming transfer all arriving in Guelph for the 2026-27 season.
 
The Gryphons open the new OUA season on Friday night (Oct. 30) with their home opener against the York Lions before closing out their weekend doubleheader against the Lions on Saturday (Oct. 31). Tickets for all of the Gryphons home game are available at gryphons.ca/tickets.