V’ball Dogs have eyes on long playoff run

The volleyball Dogs hope to continue their upward climb in Canada West’s upper echelons.

The University of Saskatchewan men’s volleyball squad turned things around last season by making the playoffs and have every intent on lengthening that playoff run this time around.

“It’s kind of the year after the turnaround, so to speak,” says coach Brian Gavlas. “We made some good strides last year. We do have quite a bit of continuity, although we do have some new people in some pretty key positions in setting and Libero positions.

“We’re very confident that those positions will be well taken care of.”

At setter, the Huskies will look at transfers Zak Rempel (Medicine Hat College) and Emory Wells (University of Winnipeg) to replace graduate Chris Gilbert. Matt Erickson takes over from Jeff Grant at Libero. Joel Dyck has also graduated. Key returnees include Canada West second-team all-star Bryan Fraser (311 kills), middle Braden McLean (83 blocks), who spent another summer with Canada’s national development team and Paul Thomson (256 kills, 27 kills, 122 digs).

“As far as expectations, playoffs for sure,” Fraser says. “Once we get to playoffs, building on the experience we got from last season will be big. Making nationals is a goal for ours. We think we have a chance.

“What’s going to be key is our serve-receive. With Braden in the middle, getting him balls every chance we can is going to be key and we’ll have our corners to bail us out when we can.”

Matt Busse, Tyler Epp, Jordan Nowakowski and Robert Graham are other returning veterans.

“We have good depth and some good leadership from our collective group,” Gavlas says.

Epp and Nowakowski are expected to see their roles expand.

“It’s a tough conference,” admits Gavlas. “Rankings came out and our first two weekends are against No. 1 (Alberta) and No. 3 (Trinity Western).

“Our conference is extremely difficult. To start against those teams is a good measuring stick for us.”