McMaster remains focused on gold

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McMaster Men’s Volleyball hosted the defending national champions Alberta Golden Bears for a three-game series that commenced on Thursday night and ended on Saturday night. The Marauders won two out of the three games in straight sets and conceded Saturday night’s game in a hard-fought five-set battle that McMaster Head Coach Dave Preston called a “title fight.”

A title fight is exactly what is on the minds of the McMaster Men’s Volleyball team. McMaster hosts the 2016 CIS Men’s National Volleyball Championship from March 10-12, 2016. As the host school, McMaster has an automatic bid to the tournament.

In terms of university volleyball, the nation’s attention will be fixed on the action inside Burridge Gym come March. The Marauders have turned into a national powerhouse. In the past three years, McMaster has come within reach of national glory, taking silver in 2013 and bronze in both 2014 and 2015.

This group has one ultimate goal: national gold. Nothing less. This year’s road to glory started with a preseason game at Redeemer last week and the Alberta games this weekend were another set of steps. Every step along the way will serve to ensure that they get closer to that goal. Many things can happen throughout the course of a season, but the Marauders have one guarantee that acts as a benchmark for them.

“We know that on March 10 at 8 p.m. we play a national quarterfinal. That end point in past years was not a fixed agenda. This year it is,” said Preston. “So now we get to work back from there and do all kinds of different things but we want to make sure that come March 10, we’re ready for our defining moment.”

Until then, however, depth and rhythm are two key concepts that Preston and the rest of the coaching staff are trying to instill.

“If you want really strong rhythm right now, then you need to play six or seven guys. But if you want to get depth and create that, then you have to play a lot of guys and that’s what we’re doing right now,” Preston said.

“We’re going to build our depth. We don’t need our rhythm right now as much as we need our depth and so we’re going to continue to do that. After Christmas is when we’ll start to build our rhythm. In the meantime we’re going to play a lot of guys and give them some really meaningful moments and good opportunities.”

Valuable experience will come in the form of a trip to Poland that begins on Oct. 10 and ends on Oct. 19. Along with working on depth and rhythm, Preston is focusing on something he refers to as “performance standards.” A stats coach on the Men’s Volleyball staff is responsible for tracking every single contact a Marauders player makes. All of those plays are rated on a scale of zero to four.

“It’s basically like writing a test. We evaluate those tests as they’re going on. Our goal is to serve and pass at a certain number (on that scale). We didn’t get there this weekend,” Preston said. “Those are our performance standards so as much as we want to take some solace in the fact that we played the two-time defending national champs pretty good, we didn’t do what we wanted to do.”

With the Alberta series in the rearview mirror, March 10 inside Burridge remains the inevitable destination. No matter what happens this season the road will end, and in another sense, begin on March 10 when the lights turn on and this hungry Marauders team shows their home crowd how much they really want national gold.

Does the fact that this Marauders team has a guaranteed spot in the national quarterfinal at home change their level of focus and preparation?

“Oh no. This group wouldn’t do that. They’re too dialed in. They’ve been dialed in for years. You don’t get this good by just showing up and throwing your sticks in the middle for some shinny,” Preston said. “We’re dialed in.”