By: Griffin Marsh
A strong start shows positive signs for the upcoming season of Marauder men’s volleyball.
The University Sports volleyball season is long and gruelling; 17 regular season games followed by half a dozen elimination games during postseason play.
With their eyes fixed on a national championship, the Marauders have kicked off their season with a 3-0 start.
Getting this season off to a good start was an important first step for this team, especially coming off a frustrating end to last season and an up-and-down preseason. The nerves, excitement, and effort were tested in the first set against the Guelph Gryphons on Nov. 28, where the Marauders battled out a 27-25 victory.
“What was more impressive was we were able to execute down the stretch at that emotional level,” head coach Dave Preston said. “Once we got used to playing at that emotional level, we started to roll, and the next two sets took care of themselves.”
Not only did they beat the Gryphons, but they have yet to lose a set this season, dispatching Trent and York with ease. To Preston, though, the results are not the focus right now.
“We are really focused on our serving, our passing, and our defence, and I’m much more pleased with that than I am about the three wins,” he said. “This Marauder team wants to win, but most importantly they want to grow and build off of each game so that each win becomes cleaner, stronger, and more confident.”
When asked who has stood out on the court thus far, Preston praised the play of flexible setter Andrew Richards, veteran hitter Jayson McCarthy, and Brandon Koppers.
“[He] is positioning himself as one of the premier hitters in the country,” Preston said of Koppers.
These are the veterans and leaders of this team, so it should be encouraging for everyone involved that these players are leading by example. Another positive sign for the Marauders is the play of their two liberos, Pawel Jedrzejewski and Jordan Pereira.
McMaster has changed its use of the libero this season, adopting a new U Sports rule change that allows for two liberos to interchange between points without a substitution. Some teams have not elected for this strategy, fearing that it would break up the rhythm and momentum of the players. In contrast, the Marauders have used the rule change to great success, and the credit goes to the personnel in play.
“We are in the good fortune of having three amazing liberos, so I think [with] Pawel and Jordan attaching themselves to it right now, we are using both of their strengths,” said Preston.
For Pereira, a freshman just beginning his Marauder career, this is a wonderful opportunity.
“I’ve learned a lot playing alongside Pawel. He has been a great mentor to me and I try to learn as much as I can from him to improve my own game,” said Pereira.
The results and performances have lined up thus far for the Marauders, but there is still a lot of regular season play left. McMaster has three games before the winter break, with the goal of approaching each game one at a time.
It is early, but the current attitude and results point towards an exciting year of Marauder volleyball.
By: Griffin Marsh
Entering the Oct. 28 season-opener against the Guelph Gryphons, the McMaster men’s volleyball team will tell you that this has not been a regular off-season. To understand that, one must look back to the end of last season, to when McMaster hosted the Canadian Interuniveristy Sport Men’s Volleyball Championships in Burridge Gym.
The championship game was on March 12 and the top-seeded Marauders faced Trinity Western University for the title. The game ended in Trinity Western’s favour, a result that would shake up the Marauder locker room for months to come.
“I think anytime you handle an adversity of that magnitude, it really defines your character,” said head coach Dave Preston.
“It look quite a long time for a lot of our student athletes to digest exactly what opportunity we had and what we didn’t take advantage of at that stage.”
Not only did that loss affect these athletes, but the moving parts that came together last season do not look the same today. Since that day in March, the Marauders have lost Ontario University Athletics MVP Stephen Marr to a bright pro-volleyball career in Europe and Alex Elliot, a player coach Preston described as “probably one of the greatest leaders this program has ever seen on an off the court.”
“Those guys don’t come along every single year,” added Preston.
“We are not trying to fill gaps that people believe may have been left by their absence. We are just a different group now.”
So what does the reality of a different group look like for this season of men’s volleyball at McMaster?
The answer is exciting. McMaster enters the season ranked third in the country after a pre-season where results and confidence seemed to improve with every match.
The pre-season began on Sept. 23 at the University of Alberta, where McMaster lost three games over the weekend without winning a single set, something that has not happened in the last decade, according to Preston.
October marked a turning point for the team, with confidence-boosting victories over second-ranked TWU on Oct. 2 and fourth ranked University of Manitoba on Oct. 15.
Besides the results, the loss of all-Canadian setter Andrew Kocur to injury pre-season continues to show this team’s grit. Third-year Andrew Richards has answered the call and showed his flexibility, filling into the vacant setter position.
This shift has also allowed players such as Connor Santoni, Craig Ireland, and Matt Passalent to step up and fill gaps at outside hitter. All in all, this team is starting to click and it is clear that the chemistry growing day in day out.
While the flexibility and depth in this team is clear today, the future is also very exciting. Sophomore Matt Passalent and freshmen Jordan Pereira spent their summers with the Canadian junior national team, competing in the North, Central American and Caribbean Volleyball Confederation Continental Championships. Those championships saw Pereira named Best Passer, Digger and Libero at the tournament, and both players received valuable experience against some excellent competition.
Freshman David Doty also joins the Marauders, bringing a completive spirit and a summer of experience with the Canadian youth national team.
Forgetting about the past and ignoring the future beyond this current season, the goals of this team in the present remain the same.
“[We’re going to] try and secure as much home court advantage through the regular season as possible so we can have home court advantage through the playoffs, and then challenge for an OUA championship and three more matches for a CIS championship,” said coach Preston.
“[We’ll] take the 17 league matches one match at a time and try and put ourselves in a position for that,” added Preston, commenting that this OUA league is tough and no team will have a simple walk to home court advantage.
That journey got underway in a positive manner last Friday, as the team settled into a three sets to zero victory over Guelph.
Up next, the men travel to Peterborough to face the Trent University on Nov. 4, followed by York back at home on Nov. 5. Settle in sports fans, we have another exciting volleyball season ahead of us.
Andrew Richards
With the loss of Andrew Kocur to injury, third-year Andrew Richards has been thrust into a big time role on this team. “The mindset really is to just take it one day at a time and welcome the process,” said Richards. Richards is one of the three members of the team’s leadership council, and plays a big role for this team on and off the court. At the end of winter term 2016, Richards was awarded the Wilson Leadership Award for his notable contributions academically, athletically, and in the community. When asked how he balances it all, Richards responded: “It can get busy at times but it is well worth it… The Wilson Scholar Leadership award has been an amazing opportunity, one that I will never take for granted.” Richards is a true leader and one we will hear a lot about this year.
When the Marauders stepped on to the court for their CIS semi-final match against the Western Mustangs, they knew they were in familiar territory.
In last year’s CIS semi-final, they were up against the Mustangs as well. This was a game that the Marauders took easily, 3 sets to 0, but this year’s CIS semi-final would play out very differently.
The Marauders and Mustangs rivalry has been present in men’s volleyball for years, and for the first time in the past two seasons, the Mustangs were able to come out of the match victorious.
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“You can’t beat a team that good, every single time you play them,” said Coach Dave Preston.
In the past two years, the Marauders and Mustangs have played each other a total of nine times.
In those nine matches, that are comprised of both regular season and playoff games, the Marauders have won eight of them.
But in their ninth meeting in two years at the Jack Simpson Gym in Calgary, the Mustangs were a very different team.
“Western just played loose and care-free, and they were playing like there was little consequence to their game and that isn’t how we were playing,” said Preston.
“They weren’t letting anything affect them, good or bad… they were just swinging. They didn’t care if they got blocked or not, and sometimes playing loose can be the difference and in the past that hasn’t been the case but this time it was.”
Just six days prior to the CIS semi-final, the Marauders hosted the OUA Championships, which saw the Maroon and Grey dominate playoff action in the Burridge Gym- and easily take Western in the OUA final in four sets.
But on Feb. 28, the roles were reversed, as the Mustangs diminished the Marauders first-place national championship hopes by taking the match in four sets (25-23, 17-25, 30-28, 25-20).
For the first time in two years, the Mustangs were the better team.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen our guys as disappointed in the last two years as they were that night,” said Preston.
Although the match could be seen as an upset, the fact of the matter is, the Mustangs have always been a team that has been able to make the Marauders have to play to their absolute best abilities.
In two match-ups this year, the Mustangs were able to take the Marauders to five sets, where the matches could have easily gone in Western’s favour.
It was only a matter of time for the Mustangs to finally conquer the Marauders, and they happened to do it at the best time in national championship action.
“They finished fourth last year [at CIS Championships] and that was a re-match of last year’s semi-final, so they deserve everything, there’s no doubt about it,” said Preston.
Despite the Marauders disappointment, they did not take too much time to dwell on their loss, as the bronze-medal match against Laval was taking place on the following day.
Coach Preston was sure to instill in the player’s minds that the bronze medal match-up would be a new game, and a new opportunity for Mac to prove themselves.
“The way we termed it was bronze medals go to the team that can pick themselves up and dust themselves off,” said Preston.
“That’s a pretty important lesson in life, it’s not the failure that you’re concerned about, it’s whether or not you react to it properly and I was very proud of how we reacted to it,”
The Marauders beat their CIS rivals from the finals last year- the Laval Rouge-et-or, with ease, finishing the team off in three sets.
Preston was proud of the team’s ability to rebound after their tough semi-final loss.
“With the season we just had mentally, we’re tougher than we are and we proved that in the bronze medal match. We’re capable of rebounding, now we have to use it at the right time.”
The Marauders will now prepare for their off-season, which will consist of six months of consistent physical training that the team will waste no time getting started on.
But McMaster will never forget this year’s CIS semi-final game, and will use it as motivation heading into next season.
“We still feel like it’s undone. We still feel like we’re not satisfied, but we also believe that were very, very close to where we want to be,” said Preston.
With five OUA championship wins in the last seven years, and two CIS medals in the last two years, the Marauders will hope to be exactly where they would like to be next season—on a plane back from the CIS Championships with a gold medal in hand.
The Marauders have had hardly any time to let their OUA Championship wins sink in.
Just a couple of days after the men's volleyball team's big win against Western - a game they took to four sets - the Maroon and Grey boarded a flight to Calgary, where they will prepare to battle in the biggest tournament of their season, and possibly their lives. The women's team also took OUA gold and will compete in nationals in Regina from Feb. 28 to March 2.
McMaster men's volleyball is currently ranked No. 1 overall in the CIS, and in the national championship tournament that takes place Feb. 27 - March 1. They will attempt to live up to expectations, and come back to McMaster University victorious.
The Marauder men will attempt to keep their momentum from the OUA Championships, which saw the Maroon and Grey face some fierce playoff competition in both the Ryerson Rams and Western Mustangs.
In the semi-final game against the Rams, the Marauders got off to a slow start in the first set, but made up for it in the remainder of the set and the match. They took the match easily in three sets (25-22, 25-19, 25-10).
The OUA final was a different story. The Marauders and Western Mustangs have an intense rivalry, as the Mustangs always manage to fight hard until the very end of every match against them. In their two match-ups this season, the Mustangs have taken the Marauders to five sets.
In this particular match, however, the Marauders were able to hold off the Mustangs to four sets (25-16, 21-25, 25-19, 25-15), and win the match, to capture their second consecutive OUA Championship title.
In order to peak for the tournament, Coach Preston has outlined a strict training regimen for the team to follow, which saw them ramp up their training in the week before the OUA Championships, before winding it down the week of the championships.
The Maroon and Grey will now coast into the CIS Championships, and will have had the opportunity to practice in the Jack Simpson Gym at the University of Calgary for a couple of days before their first game on Feb. 27.
The other teams that will be competing for a national championship include the Alberta Golden Bears, the Trinity Western Spartans, The Calgary Dino’s, The Dalhousie Tigers, Montreal Carabins, Western Mustangs, and Laval Rouge et Or - a team that the Marauders are very familiar with from last year’s CIS Championships, that saw them win the final match against the Maroon and Grey to take the national title.
After a successful season that saw the Marauders work exceptionally hard to come out on top, the CIS Championships is sure to be a battle that Mac will rise to the occasion for. The men's first match will take place Feb. 27 at 8 p.m. MST. The women will take on Laval on Feb. 28 at 8 p.m. MST.
The Marauders are reaching the final stages of their successful season, which has seen them ranked the number one team in the CIS, with an outstanding record of 17-1 and they haven’t even reached their peak yet.
There are two more games in the regular season that are coming up this weekend where Mac will face the York Lions and Nipissing Lakers, but after these two games comes what Coach Dave Preston likes to call the “fun” part of the season - the OUA Championships.
Due to the Marauders first-place ranking in the OUA, they will get a bye through the quarter-finals, which Coach Preston sees as a major advantage for his team.
“We don’t have a match to prep for next week, so we can take care of our league matches this weekend and close the regular season out,” said Preston.
“And then the first week of our playoffs we get to ramp up our training a little bit, mainly physically, so that we can taper off of it after.”
Preston’s plan is to get the team to work hard in their bye-week, so that they can bounce off of that during the OUA Championships where they will taper their training.
After the OUA Championships, the team will have little time to rest for the CIS Championships, as they will have about a week between the OUA semi-finals on the Feb. 21 weekend, to the first round of the CIS Championships which will be taking place at the University of Calgary on March 2.
“It’s within nine days of each other, so you don’t have time to readjust things in there. You just stagger and go. From a planning perspective it works out pretty well,” said Preston.
So far this season, Preston is very pleased with the team before heading into the Championships, especially with their performance without star-hitter, Jayson McCarthy on the right-side.
McCarthy - the 6’9 hitter - has seen a major decrease in playing-time over the past couple of weeks due to a nagging ankle injury.
Although this may seem like a major setback for the Marauders, it hasn’t been, as Shayne Herbert has stepped up in the role and has done a tremendous job thus far.
When McCarthy was healthy for the first part of the season, the position was undoubtedly his. But after Herbert’s ability to take advantage of his starting role, the position is officially up for grabs.
“Shayne is playing great for us right now. It’s not Jay’s spot, it’s the spot, and Shayne and Jay are battling for it,” said Preston.
The battle for the right-side isn’t a bad thing, though. It just means that the Marauders have tremendous talent both on the court, and on the bench.
“The luxury for us is we’ve got two really good right-sides right now,” said Preston.
Aside from the players on the court that have contributed to the Marauders successful season thus far, lots of work has been done by the assistant coaches—Nathan Janzen and Parrish Offer -- to assist the Maroon and Grey with their winning formula.
During and after every single game, against every single opponent, Assistant Coaches Janzen and Offer get together and create a detailed sheet of the statistics of every contact and play of the game, and they rate it at a five-point scale.
So they get to keep track of how the other team is passing, hitting, blocking, serving and digging - and then they relay the information to the team, so that they can make the necessary in-match adjustments.
Due to the Marauders seeing teams multiple times during the regular season, they have managed to see patterns with each team that remain consistent. This information allows them to have each team in the OUA down to a science.
“We’ve got 5 or 6 matches on Queens, 8 or 9 matches on Waterloo, 8 matches on Western, we’ve got ten matches on York. We’ve got almost half of the sizeable data we’re getting now, so you start to see some tendencies. When you start to put ten matches on a team, their repeatability starts to show.”
Preston credits this “information-gathering” method of coaching to his experience with coaching Team Canada. Professional and international teams use the same kind of method, which gives them that extra edge on the competition.
“I’ve been doing this for 15 years, and this is what you do internationally, this is how pro teams work, this is how national teams work, this is how you win Olympic championships,” said Preston.
Another part of the Marauders success lies in four main principles that Preston drills home to the entire team, every single day.
These four principles include: simple, repeatable, manage risk, and reduce variance.
“It’s not rocket science. We’re not flashy,” said Preston.
“The tactical, the technical, the physical, the mental, we don’t need to be pushing five thousand pounds one day and not pushing the next. Just do what we do and do it right.”
Before the Marauders get too ahead of themselves, however, there are still two more games in the regular season that they will need to get by this weekend before the OUA play-offs begin.
Preston is very happy about where the team stands heading into the play-offs, and he knows that his team is more than prepared for any adversity, or obstacles that they may face along the way.
“There’s always the unknowingness of sport. That’s kind of why we do it though, that’s the adrenaline rush to it. But we’re ready for it, we’re prepared for it,” said Preston.
“This isn’t a challenge that is beyond them or too much for them. This is what they came for, this is what they want to do. So from my perspective, we’re going to keep doing what we do, whether it’s our regular season or playoff season or national championship, we’re going to play our game.”
When it comes to the Marauders season so far, Preston compares it to the children’s parable that he reads to his two daughters for a bed-time story - The Tortoise and the Hare.
“Slow and steady wins the race. I don’t really prescribe to the slow part of it, but steady for sure. Just know who you are, keep doing what you do, and know how you do it.”
The Marauders will look to keep doing what they’re doing this weekend against the York Lions and Nipissing Lakers in their last two games of the regular season, before they work harder than they have all season in their bye-week.
The Waterloo Warriors have always been a team that has managed to give the Marauders a run for their money, and on Friday night in the PAC Gym in Waterloo, they finally came out of the contest with a win.
“Waterloo did exactly what we should have done and kept going. They took the fourth set, along with a boat-load of momentum, and at that stage it was like trying to stop an avalanche,” said Coach Dave Preston.
The Marauders best set of the match was the third set that saw them easily take it with a score of 25-13, which Preston credited to their defence.
“Our transition game was good, our blocking structure was good, I thought our defence in the third set might have been our best defensive set yet.”
After the third set, the Marauders began to let off a little bit, which ended up costing them the game.
The fourth set saw Mac give up a 20-16 lead, as they hopelessly watched the Warriors score nine of the next 11 points.
“It all started with us getting a little too soft at the back court, and a little too soft at the net. You can’t do that, not at the level that we want to play,” said Preston.
Preston and the Marauders have taken the Warrior comeback in the fourth set as a valuable lesson of what not to do going forward; they now know that they cannot lift their foot off the pedal and coast to win.
The Marauders had 48 hours to recover from their first loss, and in this time span Preston had a lot of time to work with the athletes and talk to them on ways in which they can improve.
“It’s really important to deal with the pieces, not the team, and all of my focus, all of my communication, all of my messaging was towards the individuals,” said Preston.
In his meetings with the players, he reinforced three questions: who are we, what do we do, and how do we do it.
The Marauders were able to respond to their loss on Sunday against the Guelph Gryphons, where they played exceptionally well and swept the match, 3-0.
Although the Marauders cannot erase the loss from their record, they have used it as a lesson for the future, and a sign of things to build upon for the remainder of the season.
“We’ve learned to handle winning very, very well. I now know that we can handle losing, very, very well as well. That’s not a lesson thankfully that we have to learn often, but it’s an important lesson,” said Preston.
Despite the loss, the Marauders are still sitting first overall in the OUA, and still have the best record in Canada of 15-1.
They won’t forget the loss—it’s a part of their season.
But Preston knows that his team will recover and react appropriately to it.
“I think the loss is part of our season. I think that failing to address it would be a mistake. So we’re going to react to it but not over-react. It’s part of making us who we are.”
The Marauders will look to keep their winning mentality alive next weekend in Kingston, Ont., where they will play against the RMC Palladins and the Queen’s Gaels.
By: Laura Sinclair
The Marauders men’s volleyball team had an eventful weekend hosting the Guelph Gryphons on the evening of Friday, Nov. 16 and the Waterloo Warriors on the following Sunday afternoon. The Marauders came out of both games victorious, but the victories did not come easily.
In the Friday night game, the Gryphons got off to an early lead. The Marauders quickly retaliated, jumping out in front with the help of some strong serves from Jayson McCarthy, who had two aces in a row. More key points for the Marauders were scored from Tyson Alexander who had three straight blocks. The Marauders won the set 25-22.
In the second set of the game, just when it looked like the Marauders were pulling away, the Gryphons took the lead. After the Gryphons team constantly hit the ball out of bounds, the Marauders pulled away and ended up winning the set 25-19.
In the third set, the Marauders got up to a 9 point lead. The Gryphons eventually surrendered, with the score being 25-16 for Mac. The star of the game was McCarthy, who scored nine kills.
Despite the glory of remaining undefeated, Marauders head coach Dave Preston is not satisfied with just a win.
“Right now, our game isn’t based on wins and losses, our game is based on our performance standard of our serving and passing and qualifications within our statistics,” said Mac’s bench boss.
Preston has high expectations and goals for his team that he believes have not been reached. “We’re not meeting them all yet, so I don’t really have to say too much to the guys; the numbers will speak for themselves.”
The intensity was high at the Sunday afternoon game against the Waterloo Warriors, as both teams were 6-0 coming into the game. The first set of the game was dominated by the Warriors early on, until the Marauders got their act together and returned blocks to get on the score board. The teams were very evenly matched, as the lead kept switching.
After a time out called by Waterloo, the Marauders kept their lead, but this would not last long as Waterloo came back to tie it up. After some out-of-bounds hits by the Marauders, Waterloo got to a lead of 23-22. The Marauders tied the score, and managed to hang on to win the first set 25-23.
The second set saw a quality effort from both teams, with the players diving all over the court to keep the ball in play. The Marauders got off to the first lead, which never got higher than six points throughout the set. Waterloo narrowed the lead to two points, and after an long rally between the two teams, Waterloo got to their first lead of the set, 19-18. The Warriors kept their momentum against the persistent McMaster squad. Warriors won the second set 29-27, giving the Marauders their first lost set of the season.
The third set started off with a rally of almost a minute between the two teams, with the outcome of the point going to Mac. The Marauders continued to dominate the majority of the set, winning it 25-14.
The fourth set was dominated by the Marauders early on, as they got to a lead of six points over Waterloo. The Warriors came back to lead after an unsuspected comeback to make the score 14-13. Their lead would never get to be more than two points. After a time-out from the Marauders got ahead again, winning 25-23. The leading scorer of the game was McCarthy, with 16 kills followed by Mantha and Alexander with 10 kills. The player of the game was Austin Campion-Smith, who had 46 assists.
Coach Preston was happy about the experience gained for the Marauders in this exciting game.
“We want to make sure that teams play great against us, so that we can play great, and Waterloo did today so I was pretty happy about that,” Preston commented.
Next up for the Marauders is a trip to London to take on the Western Mustangs and Windsor to take on the Lancers in the attempt to remain the number one team in the OUA.
