TL Reid - sports editor 

A cheer went up from the men’s volleyball locker room on Saturday night. 

“Oh, a yellow one,” someone said, taking the winners’ copy of the ACAC stats sheet. It’s been a long time since the Griffins saw one of these. Their last win – apart from an exhibition match at New Year’s – was back in November. 

But after seven straight losses (and the pink losers’ copies of the game stats) in 2010, the Griffins have finally pulled out of their rut with a fifth-set win at home over the SAIT Trojans. 

“I knew as a coach that this team was not to be taken lightly,” said SAIT coach Ryan Marsden after Saturday’s match. “It’s unfortunate that it had to happen tonight against us…. They deserve every ounce of respect and their 1 and 7 record is not at all a reflection of the type of team that they are.” 

Friday night’s match in Calgary was also evenly matched, but went SAIT’s way with a 3-1 win. 

“We put our block in a good position to make them make lots of errors [last night],” said Marsden. “Tonight, they did a better job of using our block, instead of trying to get around it and making errors. We really struggled to adjust to that, and we lacked the heart and determination we needed to fight for the win.” 

SAIT took the initial advantage on Saturday with a25-19 win in the first set. MacEwan battled back to take the second set 25-22, and scraped a 27-25 win after a very close third set. 

But in the fourth, SAIT got up 7-1 in the beginning and continued to pull away, finally taking the set by 14 points. MacEwan maintained a lead through most of the fifth set, but let SAIT tie the game at 13. A few strong hits from Ryan McDonald and Tristan Locke put Mac ahead for a 17-15 finish. 

“At crucial moments, we stepped up. Last night we had probably a similar match but when it came down to the clutch we weren’t able to turn some points that would have turned the match for us,” said Griffins coach Jon Heinen. “We had a little more grit, a little more fire to actually do what we needed to do to win the match.”            

SAIT is currently ranked seventh nationally, and sits at third in the second-semester “power pool.” MacEwan is at the bottom of the division, in sixth place. But this weekend’s win gives a beacon of hope – had they lost, the Griffins couldn’t have climbed any higher in the rankings before provincials; now, they have the opportunity to get up to fourth place. 

Captain Steve Phillips said that a long team meeting on Monday helped focus each player on what he needed to accomplish every game. 

“A lot of things came down to passers need to talk more and work on their pass… a lot of it was just confidence, really,” Phillips said. 

The Griffins play both their remaining regular season matches in Grande Prairie next week. Your next chance to see them play will be in March, when MacEwan hosts the CCAA men’s volleyball nationals. 

With their 1 and 7 record, MacEwan is currently the only team in the power pool that isn’t nationally ranked. At this point, though, they’re the only team that isn’t worrying about where they end up: as hosts of nationals, the Griffins are guaranteed a spot. 

And now that their losing streak is over, the team is happy to leave January behind. 

“It was tough to stay positive through all of it, but we know we’re a good team and we knew the whole time that we were a good team,” said McDonald. “I think the last couple games especially, obviously the frustration was building up after the first couple losses. We just realized we needed to calm down.”