Jason Hills
For MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – The MacEwan Griffins have no problem playing the underdog role this season. But they can’t help but feel they let their home opener against the Thompson Rivers Wolfpack slip away.
After a gritty opening set victory, they fell in four sets (27-25, 22-25, 17-25, 19-25) on Friday night at the David Atkinson gymnasium.
“That first set, everything couldn’t have gone more perfect. We were up with them the whole time, and everyone was engaged, and we were up on the ball,” said Griffins middle Spencer Loucks.
“As the game wore on, we were up and down on points, and we needed to find a way to stay on that gas and maintain our speed.”
Jarod Robert led MacEwan with 12 kills and eight digs, while Fabian Breitenbach chipped in with eight kills and three digs in the loss for the Griffins who fell to 0-3 to start the season.
Alex Howard recorded 17 kills and seven digs in the win for TRU, who opened their season with a victory. Aiden Goetz recorded eight kills and one block, while Parker Bailey chipped in with seven kills and one block for the Wolfpack.
It was an impressive opening set win for the Griffins. They took their first lead of the match at 4-3, and a Seth Birkholz kill gave MacEwan a commanding 12-6 lead, but TRU showed some strong fight and slowly chipped away at MacEwan’s lead.
TRU eventually took an 18-17 lead, and while the Griffins could’ve broken down completely after giving up their big lead, they showed strong poise and another big block from Birkholz would cut TRU’s lead to 22-21.
Then a strong play at the net from Brendon Lord, who finished with seven kills and four digs for the Griffins restored the lead for MacEwan at 25-24, and then Breitenbach made another big play at the net to secure the set win.
“There’s a different vibe on this team and we’ve gone through a culture change… the guys come in every day wanting to get better and are always asking for feedback and are ready to go,” said Loucks.
“Over the course of the season, we will continue to get better. Tonight, we’ve got to learn from it and tomorrow and go play our hearts out.”
The Griffins lost a tight battle in the second set, and went back and forth with TRU, but an ace from Rylan Ibbetson gave the Wolfpack a 24-21 lead late, and the Griffins couldn’t rally.
After dropping the third set, 25-17, the Griffins were on their heels in the fourth set, but despite being down the entirety of the fourth, they scratched and clawed their way back to tie it at 17-17 after a massive block from Birkholz, but they ran out of gas.
Ibbetson recorded three straight aces to break it open 21-17, and MacEwan couldn’t wrestle back the momentum.
“Our focus is on what we can do to get better each night. How can we compete to the best of our abilities and bring everything we have. Unfortunately, we lost it a little bit tonight in certain instances,’ said Robert.
“We showed huge growth tonight, but we let them carry the momentum a little too much in crucial moments.”
The Griffins know they can raise their level of play. It starts with being more consistent in key moments of each set, and they know they need to raise their intensity and put more pressure on their opponent.
“Communication is something we need to be better at. Tonight, there were a lot of plays that were easy to battle out of, but because we had some communication errors, we let some balls drop, and we ran into each other. We can’t have that,” said Loucks.
“Our serving was a lot better (than last week), and if we can tighten up on our communication, we will definitely put ourselves in a better position to be more successful tomorrow.”
MacEwan and TRU will wrap up their weekend series on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. at the David Atkinson gymnasium.
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