GUELPH, ON – Two weeks ago, the Gryphons men's volleyball suffered a disappointing straight sets loss on home court versus York. Apparently that was just the wake up call the team need. In the 14 days since, they've played nearly perfect volleyball. On Saturday at the Guelph Gryphons Athletics Centre, they won their third straight match, sweeping the Windsor Lancers 3-0. Set scores were 27-25, 25-21, 25-15.
"That York match really snapped our guys out of it," head coach
Cal Wigston said of their recent funk. "We can't take teams lightly."
"We finally found our groove on the home court, which is nice," said middle blocker
Kendrick Kerr. "We got a win and we've been rolling ever since."
Kerr was referring to a sweep over Nipissing, which happened one day after being swept by the Lions. Saturday's victory marked three straight match wins for the Gryphons, and nine perfect sets in a row.
It didn't look that way in the beginning, though. The first set was back and forth until the Lancers took control. They were leading 24-21 and looking to close out the set before the Gryphs stormed back to win six of the next seven points, and go up 1-0 in sets.
"It's tough when you're down, and when they hit 24, that's normally the mark where you kind of start looking toward the next set," said Kerr, a third-year player from Georgetown, ON. "But Josh Green had a great block, and that was the turning point. It got the boys fired up, and we finished it from there."
"We work on that in practice," Wigston said of the team's growing resilience. "We talk about grit. We talk about, who are you when adversity hits? And we want to be that team that never quits.
"Windsor's a lot like that, but we just said no, we're going to be that team."
The Lancers, for their part, did not play Saturday like they were a last-place team with a 2-10 record. They gave Guelph all they had until they finally started running out of gas in the third set.
"We knew Windsor was going to be tough," Wigston said. "I don't know what it is about Windsor and Guelph, but it's always tough. That was a very emotional match for both teams, and it's nice to get the win."
Kerr had a team-high 11 kills on offence for the Gryphs, and also led the way on defence with four solo blocks.
"Kendrick Kerr was just phenomenal today," the coach said. "He's a beast. He's a machine. The guy just finds a way to get the ball.
"Our outside guys struggled a little bit, but our passing was good enough to win."
Zach Newman had eight kills and four digs for Guelph,
Josh Green had five kills and eight digs, and
Jared Harris contributed six kills.
Samuel Kloke had 35 assists and five digs.
The Gryphs play their last match at home on Sunday afternoon, against the Western Mustangs. It's Senior Day and the team will pay tribute to libero
Kyle Richards and middle blocker
Greg Olejnik.
"Kyle has been, probably, the best captain I've ever had in my history of coaching," Wigston said of the five-year veteran. "He's just done such a good job of moving our culture to a place of winning. I'm really proud of him."
The match is important for another reason. The team considers it a must-win if it wants to maintain second place in the OUA West standings over the Mustangs.
"The match of the year. That's the one we need to win," Wigston said. "If we want to try to sew up second place, we've got to win that match."
