The Guelph Gryphons were in town Friday night to take on the men’s and women’s Varsity Blues volleyball teams in a doubleheader at the Athletic Centre.
After dropping their first two matches on the road, the Varsity men (0-3) were looking for their first win of the year, while the ladies were looking to stay perfect with a third-straight victory.
That it was the night before Halloween may have explained the paranormal activity the home crowd witnessed, as the Gryphons pulled out their best witch brooms and easily swept the Blues away in their respective home openers.
In the first game, the men looked to continue their dominance over a Gryphons team they absolutely manhandled last season, winning 3-1 and 3-0. But that was last year.
Refusing to give up any easy points all night, the Gryphons defence seemed impenetrable at times—they never trailed once in the match, and took it in straight sets (25-19, 25-17, 25-16).
No matter what the Blues threw at them, the Gryphons always had an answer: consistently getting a hand on balls at the net, digging balls they had no business getting to, or straight-up blocking down Blues’ attacks for points. This was clearly reflected in the final team stats as Blues only managed 17 kills on 73 attempts (compared to Guelph’s 36 on 80 attempts).
After the game, Blues head coach Ed Drakich and his star player, Steve Kung, echoed each other’s sentiments. Both were frustrated with their team’s inability to play consistently over long stretches and mentioned that they were still trying to overcome the huge loss of one of their key players last season, Jessi Lelliott.
“I think some guys might have had a little stage fright [on Friday], but we just couldn’t keep it together over a long series of points,” said Drakich. “We would get right back into a set and then would kill the momentum with a bad pass or service error.”
“The inconsistency [is] frustrating,” said Kung, the 2008-09 OUA player of the year.
The Blues’ biggest nightmare Friday night had to be Winston Rosser. Having an absolute monster game for the Gryphons, Rosser led all players with 15 kills to go along with two service aces and a couple blocks.
Time and time again, the Gryphons looked to Rosser to kill any Blues chance of a comeback. He also emphatically put the exclamation mark on his performance by nailing Killiam Newman in the face with a spike that set up match point.
For the women (2-1), they were also missing two vital players from their starting lineup: Kristina Valjas to injury and last year’s OUA leading scorer, Heather Bansley, who is currently on the other side of the globe in Thailand representing one of Canada’s beach volleyball teams.
This forced head coach Kristine Drakich into starting two first-year players, Alexandra Hudson and Rebecca Crosier.
Again defence played a huge role in this match as the Gryphons were very active on the net, counting 15 points on blocks. Guelph was also very efficient on the offence as they were able to kill 47 of 101 attempts, while the Blues managed only 41 kills on a whopping 133 attempts.
While Drakich admits that her rookies struggled, she also believes her more experienced players may have been trying to do too much to make up for the absence of Valjas and Bansley.
“They perhaps were trying to cover a little too much ground instead of staying in their position and trusting their teammates to make their plays,” said Drakich.
The men’s and women’s teams tried and failed to salvage the weekend on Sunday, losing to the Waterloo Warriors 3-2 and 3-0, respectively.
