CALGARY – Sam Kay finished with a match-high 17 kills to lead the University of Calgary Dinos to a 3-1 season-opening win for the men's volleyball team against the MacEwan Griffins Friday night at the Jack Simpson Gym. 

The Dinos set the tone early and worked their way through some bumps along the way for the win, 25-14, 25-18, 22-25, 25-21.

"It was good to get the win with the boys," said Kay. "There are definitely some things we can improve on, but overall we had positive results, so we'll try to do that again tomorrow night and hopefully get them in three."

A strong match for the home team started with a dominant six-point run to kick off the first set thanks to some help from Dinos second-year Cole Czepuryk. Once that lead was established, it was home free for the Dinos as they kept the consistent six-point separation before pulling ahead with as much as a 12-point difference towards the end of the set, finalizing a 25-14 first set win.  

The second set was where the Griffins started to gain confidence on the court, with the teams trading off points to start it off with the Dinos on the advantage. The visitors took their first lead of the night courtesy of a big block from Spencer Loucks and Brendon Lord, raising them to a 9-8 point advantage. A few attack errors from the Griffins would open the doors for the Dinos, with some assistance from fifth-year Erik Godwin on both offense and defense to end set two 25-18.  

In the third set, the Griffins took a strong start keeping a consistent two-point lead from the beginning and throughout the middle of the set. A cross-court pass from Emil Olsen and few key kills from Kay pulled the Dinos to a tie at 15-15, trading points with the Griffins as the end of the set neared to an end. But it wasn't enough before the visitors took 25-22 win to stay alive in the match.

"Serves are a big one; we just need to be a little bit more consistent with those," said Kay, regarding the teams' struggle in the third set. "There were a couple errors just in hitting and passing, but overall just looking to improve on those."

"We were in control at times, and then we kind of let our foot off the gas a bit and made some mistakes that are kind of not acceptable at this level," added Calgary head coach Graham Vigrass. "Consistency is the key. Any team can play well for a certain amount of points. It's how long that you can do that that determines if you're a good team or not."

What would prove to be the last set of the night started more or less the same as the last, trading points between the teams. It was a series of attacks from Godwin, Czepuryk and Kay that finalized the 25-21 fourth set win and season opening match victory for the Dinos.

"[Consistency] is not something that can just be fixed overnight," Vigrass said. "It's a thing that needs to change in the way we prepare and how this becomes habit. So it has to become habit that we're fully focused for every point, and that happens in practice where we come in and we're fully focused start of practice to end. We try to keep that focus for as long as we can for practice and matches and slowly the skill will get better and better."

Regarding the new roster for the upcoming 2025-2026 season, Vigrass added, "I like our level. We've got 15 players who can all play volleyball, so when we're healthy, our level in practice is quite strong and that helps us prepare for teams."

Added Kay, "We've got a lot of youth in this team, so there's a lot of energy, a lot of spirit and we're ready to give it our all and really fight for all the games we play." 

The Dinos and Griffins will look to rematch Saturday night with a 6 p.m. start at Jack Simpson Gym.

-UC-