Toronto trip brings stiff test

Fraser Caldwell

Sports Editor

Tinkering with a team’s tactics is the continual responsibility of a coach. But in the wake of his squad’s seventh consecutive win, Marauder coach Tim Louks believes that he nearly coached his team out of a victory.

In order to pursue a particular matchup in the fourth set of McMaster’s Feb. 3 contest against the Brock Badgers, Louks shifted his team’s approach and believes that he inadvertently knocked his players out of sync.

When the Marauders dropped the fourth and faced a decisive fifth set, the coach pressed the reset button and his players responded, cruising past the Badgers by a nine-point margin.

“It felt like a dance class that was dancing in one style to the wrong kind of music,” said Louks of his squad’s fourth set against Brock. “It’s a very fragile thing when you talk about that rhythm. In the fifth set – banking on some knowledge that Brock wouldn’t tinker with their order – I went back to where we had that rhythm and it was very evident.

“That combined with a few other factors and made the girls feel more comfortable.”

Beyond their tactical approach however, Marauder setter Amanda Weldon believes that the team’s experience and success is breeding a sense of strength and perseverance that serves them well in drawn out matches.

“I definitely think it’s a matter of mental strength,” said Weldon of McMaster’s recent successes in five-set matches. “We’re getting a lot stronger in those fifth sets. There are great teams across the OUA but sometimes it takes learning how to win to finally do it.

“I think at the beginning of the season we had a great team with great potential and good players, but now we’ve learned how to play together and win those close matches.”

Integral to that teamwork is on-court communication, and Louks argues that his players were communicating particularly well over the course of the Friday night victory.

“There was really good dialogue at the timeouts,” said Louks. “They were very focused, with a really good exchange of information.”

For her part, Weldon believes that her squad has reached a level of understanding that often renders outward communication unnecessary.

“Sometimes things don’t even need to be said,” the Marauders’ third-year setter argued. “It’s an invisible string between us – you can feel when it’s there and when it’s not.”

Weldon is a central part of that understanding as the creative heart of the Maroon and Grey. While her role predominately calls upon her to fashion chances for others, the setter offered proof of her own offensive prowess in the Feb. 3 victory against the Badgers.

Weldon notched six kills at the visitors’ expense, and added four aces to tally a total of 10 points in the Friday night victory. On the topic of her attacking approach, the setter indicated that posing an offensive threat is a constant goal of hers.

“Tim always tells me to be a threat and play tall,” said Weldon. “I’m not the tallest girl in the OUA, but it’s about learning how to play tall. When I play like that, it’s when I carry the most confidence, and when I can be a threat it makes the blockers stall.

“You saw all of those kills Kailee Stock had [against Brock]. She was just ripping it.”

Louks agrees that Weldon must play aggressively to be effective, and argues that to coach her otherwise would be to waste his setter’s talent and diminish her potential.

“It’s a requirement to be aggressive,” said the Marauder bench boss. “I’d like her to be more selective but I don’t want her to play the game below the height of the net. I want her to play above the net as often as she can, and that involves activating her as an attacker.

“The moment she takes over a game it gets a little hairy. But you can’t take the athlete out of the girl. That’s a mistake. If a coach starts to shape a kid and turn them into an automaton, you lose that passion. It’s a bit of a gamble but I believe that that’s what sport is about.”

Weldon will look to pose that same offensive threat as her team travels to Toronto to wrap up its conference season against the Varsity Blues and the York Lions on Feb. 11 and 12 respectively.

The campaign-ending matches represent a stiff final test for the playoff-bound Marauders, as they come against a Toronto side currently tied with McMaster for fourth in the OUA and a York team that leads the conference and only dropped out of the national rankings this weekend.

Louks and his setter agree that the tough finale to the conference schedule is a blessing in disguise for the Marauders, serving to condition them well for the postseason.

“These are the kind of matches you have to play in weekly,” said the Marauder coach. “How can you not be better because of it, win or loss? I don’t think we can lose in this scenario. We can lose the match in Toronto and be better come playoff time because we’ve been to their building and know what they will try to do.

“Those are the games you want to compete in,” added Weldon. “You don’t want to walk into a gym and trample a team three sets in a row. The reason you play this sport is to compete. So I think that playing Toronto and York to close it out is the best thing that could have happened to us leading into the playoffs.”