Eastern Promise: Gabe deGroot on playing libero and switching from the ACAC to CIS

This is a little old, but I didn't get the time to do it before now, and I think it's still interesting. I've talked about the implications of national recruiting in CIS recently, and this fits right into that. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a feature for the Langley Times on my old high school volleyball teammate Gabe deGroot, who led the Guelph Gryphons to the Ontario final (where they lost a five-set thriller to Queen's).

deGroot's story is interesting from a couple of perspectives. For one thing, he went from high school volleyball at a small AA school in B.C. (Fraser Valley Christian) to playing for The King's University College in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference to spending the last two years with Guelph. For another, he made the transition to CIS volleyball very smoothly, claiming the OUA libero of the year award in both seasons he played with the Gryphons. That's even more impressive when you consider that he changed positions midway through his career; he was a setter in high school and in his first two years at King's, but then switched to libero.

Now deGroot's CIS career is finished, he's hoping to play professionally in Europe, which is another unique element of this story; men's volleyball is one CIS sport that actually sees a lot of players go pro, which speaks to its quality. One example would be former Queen's setter Devon Miller, who I profiled in 2008. Anyway, deGroot had some interesting thoughts on switching schools, provinces and positions; you can check them out in the story below.

Photo: Gabe deGroot (5) makes a dig in the OUA final against Queen's. [Photo supplied by Guelph Athletics]

Andrew Bucholtz
Times Reporter

Gabriel deGroot has found volleyball success in some unlikely places. After growing up in Langley and playing for the local Fraser Valley Volleyball Club and Surrey's Fraser Valley Christian Falcons, deGroot headed to Edmonton to play for The King's University College Eagles in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference. He spent three years with the Eagles before transferring to the University of Guelph in 2008 and playing for the Gryphons in Canadian Interuniversity Sport competition, which he said turned into a great decision.

"It's been awesome," he said. "It's been an amazing experience."

It often takes college players a while to adjust to the university level, but deGroot found success quickly. He switched from setter to libero in his final year with the Eagles and carried on at libero with the Gryphons, claiming Ontario University Athletics' libero of the year award in both 2008-09 and 2009-10.

deGroot said the libero position, which was introduced into international volleyball in 1998, has added a lot to the game. Liberos are defensive specialists who sub in for weak passers during their backcourt rotations and often make the crucial first dig on serves or spikes.

As liberos aren't allowed to spike or block above the net, height is less important than it is at other positions; deGroot, at 6'2'', is one of the taller liberos in CIS competition but one of the shortest players on his team. He said his height does give him an advantage, though.

"Being tall, you can cover more ground," he said. "It's still a tall man's game."

deGroot said the transition from setter to libero took a lot of work, but his setting experience has helped him in his new role.

"As a setter, you kind of see the whole game," he said. "Working with my setter, I know what he's thinking; I know what he needs."

deGroot said there was also a significant increase in pressure and level of play when he moved from the ACAC to CIS competition, but he thrived under those higher expectations.

"It's a whole new stage," he said. "I've had to push myself every day, but it's definitely a jump I was ready to make."

deGroot led the Gryphons to the OUA final Saturday, where they lost a five-set thriller against the Queen's University Golden Gaels. deGroot was named Guelph's player of the game in the loss. He said he was proud of the honour, but disappointed to fall just two points short of an OUA championship and a berth at the CIS national championships.

"It was definitely an honour, but I'd trade it for a win," he said. "I keep playing those last five to 10 points back in my head."

The Gryphons placed fifth in the OUA regular season with an 11-9 record, but made a successful playoff run, knocking off the fourth-seeded Windsor Lancers and the top-seeded McMaster Marauders in five sets each to advance to the final against Queen's. deGroot said the Gryphons had more talent than their record indicated, but it took them a while to play cohesively.


"Probably halfway through the season, we had a total turnaround," he said. "We never played as a unit before that."

deGroot said the win over McMaster was particularly sweet, as the Marauders beat the Gryphons in the OUA semifinals last season. The Gryphons lost the first two sets, but rallied to win three straight. deGroot said the atmosphere inspired them, as plenty of Guelph fans made the trip to Hamilton to cheer the Gryphons on and matched the McMaster crowd in volume.

"It was a crazy environment to be playing in," he said.

The OUA currently only receives one spot at the nationals, so the Gryphons' season ended Saturday. The spots are determined based on conferences' past performances, which deGroot said he thinks is fair. He said he thinks Ontario schools will do well enough in the future to earn more berths.

"I'm not bitter about it," he said. "I think it needs to change, but it needs to change from a skill level perspective, Ontario volleyball is getting better."

This marked deGroot's fifth and final season of post-secondary athletic eligibility, so his university career is over. He's hoping to continue with volleyball, though, and is planning to pursue professional opportunities in Europe once he completes his sociology degree this year.

"I definitely want to play at a professional level," he said.

His love for volleyball isn't a recent development, but it still burns strong.

"It's a great team game," he said. "It's been a passion of mine my entire life."

Underdog Dinos claim national title

The Dinos receive their trophy and CIS banner. [Andrew Bucholtz photo; check out my Facebook profile for more low-quality pictures from the tournament, to be posted Monday night.]

The Calgary Dinos have come a long way in a week. On March 6, they lost a five-set thriller to the Trinity Western Spartans in the Canada West semifinals. They went on to beat Thompson Rivers in straight sets in the bronze-medal match and entered the nationals this week as the sixth seed.

From there, though, things only got better for them; they knocked off the No.3 Dalhousie Tigers in a close five-set match in the quarterfinals, then beat the No.2 Alberta Golden Bears in a five-set semifinal battle and finally got revenge on the Spartans with a four-set victory in the gold-medal match.

Trinity Western head coach Ben Josephson said the Spartans didn't play as well as they could have, but the Dinos turned in a stellar effort.

"A lot of things weren’t quite working the way we wanted, but any time you play a good team, they take you out of a lot of the things you do well," he said. "They made a couple more plays than we did."

Josephson said the Dinos' blocking and passing game in particular was difficult to beat.

"They’re just a really good, stable blocking team," he said. "I felt like our guys were hitting the ball nice and hard, but their blocks slowed it down. They scrambled to the ball real well. I don’t think we matched their defensive intensity in the first half of that match."

Some underdogs in a final would embrace a us-against-the-world mentality, but Dinos' head coach Rod Durrant said his team was confident despite their low seed.

"We didn’t think the seeds meant anything," he said. "We were happy to be here and we knew we had a shot at winning."

Durrant said the talent is pretty evenly spread at the top of CIS volleyball, which means that whoever gets hot at the right time can claim a title.

"I felt everyone coming into the tournament had a chance to win it," he said. "There was no clear-cut favourite."

Durrant attributed his team's success to their self-confidence.

"They believed and they performed as best as they could when they needed to," he said. "I’m so proud of this group of guys. It’s tough to describe."

Durrant said the Dinos showed their ability to battle through adversity.

"They kept believing and kept playing," he said. "To go back to the quarterfinal, we were down 2-0 and they kept believing. To finalize it the way we did is so rewarding."

I've written a lot this weekend about the advantages of facing tough league competition (and conversely, the disadvantages of an easier league). Durrant buys that theory. He said he figures a tough regular-season schedule set his team up well for the nationals.

"Every weekend’s a battle in Canada West," he said. "I think it prepares us very well for this championship. I do think it has a lot to do with it, and I think it’s because there’s a tremendous commitment by the athletes in this conference, and coaches around this conference just prepare their guys. I think we win as a conference."

Durrant's team will experience a fair bit of attrition this summer, as they have several fourth- and fifth-year veterans leaving. He isn't concerned about that yet, though. Instead, he's happy to celebrate a national championship with his veterans (who dumped a bucket of Gatorade on him after the trophy presentation).

"I’m very excited they went out as national champions," he said. "We’ll worry about next year maybe tomorrow."

[Cross-posted to The CIS Blog]

Trinity Western - Calgary (gold medal) live blog

This one's for all the marbles. It's an all-Canada West final at the CIS men's volleyball championships here in Kamloops, with the Trinity Western Spartans taking on the Calgary Dinos. Join me in the live blog below!

Queen's - Thompson Rivers live blog

The first action of the day at the CIS men's volleyball tournament sees Queen's taking on the hometown Thompson Rivers WolfPack in the fifth-place game. Join in the live blog below!

TWU downs Laval in a thriller

That has to be one of the most exciting volleyball games I've ever seen. Both teams came out slugging early, but Laval looked to have the upper hand when they won a close third set 25-23 to take a 2-1 lead. Trinity Western refused to quit, though, winning the last two sets to advance to the final. The final set, which ended 20-18 in favour of the Spartans, could have gone either way, but in the end, they did enough to hang on.

Steven Marshall had a tremendous night for the Spartans, finishing with 25 kills. He said the whole team took their game to a new level.

"It was amazing," he said. "It was the best game we’ve had this season. I think we played as a team, as a whole. We helped each other all game."

Trinity Western demonstrated a great deal of depth; Marshall and Rudy Verhoeff (11 kills, 10 blocks) were both huge in the Spartans' comeback, with other players like Marc Howatson (16 kills) and Josh Doornenbal (9 kills) coming up big when called upon. By contrast, Laval relied mostly on the efforts of star hitter Frederic Desbiens (22 kills), with some support from Karl De Grandpre (14 kills); both had solid games, but the rest of the team didn't contribute too terribly much, which may have caused some fatigue down the stretch. Marshall said depth has been a strength for Trinity Western all season.

"We’ve always had tons of guys coming in and helping out," he said. "It’s made a huge difference all season."

I'd imagine the Spartans' experience playing tough teams all year also helped with their resurgence. Marshall said they've played a lot of close games all year, which gave them confidence after they fell behind two sets to one.

"We always felt we were going to get it," he said. "We knew this was going five from the beginning"

Interestingly, this sets up yet another final between Canada West teams. Before last year, when Laval finished second, Canada West had swept the medals seven straight years. The conference has also won 37 of the 43 national championships, and the last 15 straight titles; that streak is safe with Trinity's victory.

As I suggested this afternoon, I don't think it's necessarily an inherent talent advantage that makes western teams so dominant these days; that used to be a larger part of it, but the increased numbers of athletic entrance scholarships in other provinces and the increased role of national recruiting have helped to diminish that.

The little advantages remain, though. Trinity plays in an incredibly competitive conference, where they went 11-7 in the regular season this year. Seven of the teams in the final Top 10, including Trinity, were from the West; they face six of those teams in league play, which has to help sharpen their edge. By contrast, Laval was ranked #1 in that top 10, but they were the lone Quebec entrant; their best league competition was probably the Montreal Carabins, who lost in three sets to Laval in their first match at nationals and in four sets to Queen's in their second match. The rest of the Quebec league was even further behind. That doesn't take anything away from Laval; they certainly proved that they deserved to be at nationals and probably deserved the #1 ranking they received heading in. It does perhaps go towards explaining how an 11-7 Canada West team can upset a dominant Quebec team; those little edges you pick up from facing top competition all year can make a significant difference.

[Cross-posted to The CIS Blog]

Conferences, small edges and Canada West

Earlier this week, I wrote a long piece about how the increased availability of athletic entrance scholarships and the increased focus on national recruiting has started to help schools outside of Canada West start to catch up in sports traditionally dominated by western teams. Canada West does still have some edges in scholarships, infrastructure and coaches, but I think the gap is beginning to close a bit.

However, you wouldn't know it from this weekend's CIS volleyball national championships. As I wrote in a feature for the Queen's Journal back in 2008, men's volleyball has been solidly dominated by Canada West since its inception, with the conference claiming the last 15 straight national titles and 37 of the 43 championships that have been held. That pattern hasn't shown any signs of changing so far; there are four Canada West teams here, making up half the field; No. 2 Alberta, No. 4 Trinity Western, No. 6 Calgary and No. 7 Thompson Rivers. Three of the four won their opening games; the only one to lose was Thompson Rivers, who played against Alberta, and they bounced back with a three-set thumping of Dalhousie this afternoon.

The Queen's - Trinity Western game was supposed to be close; that's what you'd expect from a four-versus-five game. It wasn't, though; the Gaels had their moments, but the Spartans won in straight sets. When I spoke to Queen's players and coaches after the game for my recap piece for the Journal, I got some very interesting comments. Consider this one from libero Alex Oneid, who said Trinity Western's speed was one of the main things that threw the Gaels off.

"Their rate of play was pretty similar to ours," Oneid said. "This year, even some of the better teams in the OUA had a slower pace. We came here and we basically saw us, with a little more game experience."

Head coach Brenda Willis offered some thoughts along the same theme.

“I’m not sure things went wrong so much as they went right for Trinity Western," she said. "The tempo of thie offence is something we don’t face in Ontario. We also don’t face that level of serving very much, and I don’t think we passed well enough to run the offence we’re capable of running. They face other teams at that tempo, at that level of serving all the time and we don’t."

Willis said the difference between the teams wasn't so much physical talent as experience against good competition.

"Physically, we matched up very well," she said. "I don’t think we’re too small or too slow. We need to be a little more skilled perhaps and a little more in sync."

Willis said the nationals are a learning experience for the Gaels, with a chance to play some high-calibre teams. She said they have the physical talent to compete with western teams, but they need to work on the small elements of the game against elite competition if they're going to become more precise.

"The biggest thing for us is to go through this tournament learning and getting better so we can go home and realize there’s no big gap, it’s just about getting better in all the areas; faster offence, a little more aggressive defence," she said. "It’s just the little things."

I talked about the importance of regular-season competition a bit in my piece on Dalhousie last night, but I thinks it deserves some more coverage. Queen's doesn't have Dalhousie's problem of not facing high-level teams all year during the regular season, as there are some very good teams in Ontario, including McMaster, Western and Guelph. However, for every match against those teams, they have one against weaker teams like RMC (0-20 this year) or York (4-16). It's tough to learn much from those games, and it's easy to pick up bad habits in them.

Canada West has its own stragglers, like Regina (0-18 this year) and UBC (4-14), but those programs have been good at times, and they're far more the exception than the rule. It's pretty close at the top of Canada West; Thompson Rivers finished sixth during the regular season with a 10-8 mark, but they've done very well at the nationals so far. By contrast, Ontario features less elite teams and many more middling teams. Moreover, the other top-level Ontario teams all have the same problem of playing down to their competition, not being refined by it, so they're not as elite as they might be if they played in a tougher league. This suggests that in CIS sports, it might not be enough just to build your own program into a powerhouse if your league remains at a lower level.

In some ways, this difference might particularly show up in volleyball, where there are so many little changes in serving, passing and attacking styles that can make a big difference. If you're not exposed to the different styles of top teams throughout the season, it's much more difficult to quickly figure out a way to counter them at nationals. There are exhibition tournaments and such that can help with this, and the good programs do make an effort to expose their players to as much competition as possible, but that doesn't make up for a regular season of night-in and night-out battles.

There will be an interesting test of this idea in the 6 p.m. (Pacific) game tonight, with top-ranked Laval taking on No. 4 Trinity Western. Laval is an excellent team and a very physically skilled one. They've also had success at the national level; they finished second in last year's championships, breaking Canada West's streak of seven straight medal sweeps. However, they play in a much weaker league than the Spartans, who were tested night in and night out. Laval will be favoured, and there's a good chance they'll win, but if Trinity does pull off the upset, I'd venture that the strength of their schedule might be part of the reason why.

[Cross-posted to The CIS Blog]

Queen's - Montreal live blog

It's time for the first consolation semifinal at the CIS national volleyball championships in Kamloops, featuring Queen's against the Montreal Carabins. Join in the live blog below!

Live blog: Queen's vs. Trinity Western

After top-seeded Laval opened the CIS volleyball championships with a three-set thumping of Trinity Western, we're now set for what should be an entertaining second match. Queen's, who took the Ontario title in an extremely close five-set thriller against Guelph last weekend, enters the nationals as the lone OUA representative. They're seeded fifth. They'll battle the fourth-seeded Trinity Western Spartans, who came up just short in their conference final against the Alberta Golden Bears. Both teams have a lot of young talent, which should make this one thoroughly interesting. The game will be streamed live at SSN Canada; watch it there and follow along with the live blog here! We'll get underway at 6 Eastern/3 Pacific.

Checking in from the CIS volleyball championships

The CIS men's volleyball championships are underway out here in Kamloops, but there aren't any surprises so far; top-seeded Laval is up one set to nil on eighth-ranked Montreal. Later today, we'll have Queen's taking on Trinity Western at 3 p.m. Pacific, followed by the host Thompson Rivers WolfPack against the Alberta Golden Bears at 5 and the Calgary Dinos and Dalhousie Tigers at 8. The plan is to live blog all of those games, as well as chipping in a few other previews and recaps here and there. Check back here often for the latest.

CIS: Queen's - Guelph OUA final live blog

Just a quick reminder that I'll be live-blogging tonight's OUA men's volleyball final between the Queen's Golden Gaels and the Guelph Gryphons. It should be an interesting one; both teams won five-set thrillers yesterday, with the Gryphons upsetting #1 seed McMaster and the Gaels eventually prevailing over a dogged Western Mustangs squad. Both teams feature outstanding defensive players, which should lead to lots of long rallies; Guelph has two-time OUA Libero Of The Year Gabe DeGroot (a former high school teammate of mine), while Queen's has second-year starter and high-school standout Alex Oneid at libero, plus one of the best defensive hitters in the OUA in Niko Rukavina. Up front, Winston Rosser and Jamie Stamler will lead the charge for Guelph, with the ever-dangerous Joren Zeeman and Michael Amoroso, one of the game's most complete middles, responding for Queen's. It should be a great one; the Always OUA guys have a good preview up here. The game can be viewed at SSN Canada, and will be live-blogged here and at The CIS Blog. Game time is 7 p.m. Eastern/4 p.m. Pacific; come swing by then!

Insta-live blog: Queen's and Western, OUA V-ball semifinal!

This is extremely short notice, but I decided on the spur of the moment to live-blog tonight's OUA men's volleyball semi-final between Queen's and Western (you can watch here at SSN). The OUA's gone to a Final Four this year, and Guelph upset heavily-favoured McMaster in the first match earlier this afternoon, so the winner of this one will face the Gryphons tomorrow. Join us in the live blog below!