A new year of volleyball arrived, and the VIU Mariners started making good on their resolutions.
Vancouver Island University’s women’s volleyball team resumed the Pacific Western Athletic Association season this past weekend with victories Friday and Saturday at the VIU gym against the Columbia Bible Bearcats.
The M’s won both matches in straight sets, with scores of 25-18, 25-7, 25-18 the first night and then 25-11, 25-19, 25-10 the following afternoon.
“We cleaned some areas up throughout that match,” said Shane Hyde, coach of the M’s women, on Friday night. “I think we started kind of slow, maybe some jitters being back in our own gym. There’s still tons of room to improve, for sure … but I thought our girls played pretty good.”
Megan Groenendijk, VIU veteran, said her team played well in its return to PacWest action.
“There was times where we could have been a little bit crisper or a little bit cleaner, but for the most part we executed what we wanted to,” she said. “We wanted to try some new plays; we got that down. We just wanted to throw some new things out there.”
The Mariners women had an opportunity to work on different aspects of their game over the holidays, as they visited Anaheim and San Diego, lived in a house for a week and a half, and immersed themselves in volleyball.
“We got a lot of team cohesion and we got a lot of reps in,” Groenendijk said. “We practised for seven hours a day and we played, I don’t even know how many matches we played. We had so much volleyball that all that rust from the winter break just wore off really fast.”
Now above .500 thanks to this past weekend’s results, the Mariners women are poised to trend upward this winter.
“We knew we were going to have a slow start. Maybe not as slow as this, but it doesn’t surprise me much,” Hyde said. “This is where I wanted to make our push, is in second semester.
“There’s nobody that’s walking away with our conference … It’s just about getting better and better and mentally stronger.”
The Mariners men were also back in action on their home court this past weekend, losing to the Bearcats Friday and Saturday in five-set matches. Scores were 13-15, 33-31, 22-25, 25-17, 15-12 the first night and then 20-25, 24-26, 25-20, 25-21, 15-11 in the next day’s rematch.
GAME ON … VIU’s volleyball teams are on the road Friday (Jan. 23) and Saturday to face the University of the Fraser Valley Cascades.
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