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."

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!

CIS: Walters leaves Guelph

The University of Guelph announced this morning that Kyle Walters will be stepping down as their head football coach [thanks to Jaime Stein for the tip]. The press release says Walters "will be parting ways with the Gryphons to focus on pursuing coaching ventures elsewhere at the professional level."

Mike Treadgold, the sports and health editor of The Ontarion (Guelph's student newspaper), tweeted this morning that a source informed him Walters is off to Winnipeg to become the special teams coordinator with the CFL's Blue Bombers, and also mentioned that rumour on his blog. It isn't completely confirmed yet, but that certainly sounds plausible given both the Bombers' coaching turnover and Walters' apparent desire to seek opportunities at the professional level.

Guelph may miss Walters. He was only the head coach for four years and only put up a 13-18-1 record overall, but the team certainly seemed to be on the rise recently. They've made the OUA playoffs for the last three seasons and went all the way to the final in 2007. Guelph slumped to a 3-5 record this year, but still clinched the last playoff spot and gave the Yates Cup finalist Western Mustangs a tough game in the first round. Walters might have had a difficult time replacing some of his star veterans, including the five players attending the CFL's evaluation camp and quarterback Justin Dunk. Still, at least from this perspective, Guelph seemed to be an up-and-coming program. It will be interesting to see if they can continue that momentum with a new head coach.

The larger issue here, as I covered with Paul James' departure from York and Neate discussed with Denis Piché leaving Ottawa, is if CIS programs are doing enough to retain elite coaches. There's certainly been some encouraging progress on that front recently, with more schools establishing full-time coaching positions, but many CIS coaches still have to split their coaching duties with another job (whether internal or external to their university). Even the full-time coaches generally aren't paid a lot, considering the massive amounts of work they have to do.

Football in particular is a huge challenge for coaches, given the amount of athletes involved and the massive amounts of work required. I don't know the details of Walters' contract with Guelph, but having a successful program is not just about the head coach, it's also about putting a committed group of coordinators and assistants together to support him. That takes money, but investing in the coaching positions is one of the smartest moves a university can make in my mind, as coaching continuity is key to many successful programs. It will be interesting to see who the Gryphons tab as their new coach. In any case, with both Walters and Piche gone, the OUA football landscape may be quite different next season.

[Cross-posted to The CIS Blog]

CIS football live blog

I'll be live-blogging the McMaster-Guelph game today, which is on The Score's University Rush program at 1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m. Pacific. I'll also have some thoughts on other CIS football games around the league, including the Queen's - Laurier clash, which I'll be listening to on CFRC. Come join in then for any and all CIS football talk! If the CFL is more your thing, I'll also be live-blogging the B.C. - Saskatchewan clash at 5 p.m. Eastern/2 p.m. Pacific.

Western - Guelph live blog

It should be a great day in CIS football, as the No. 2 Western Mustangs take on the No. 10 Guelph Gryphons live on The Score's University Rush. I'll be live-blogging it here and at The CIS Blog with Neate Sager and Rob Pettapiece, plus anyone else who can make it out. Kickoff is at 1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m. Pacific. Come join us then!

DeGroot named OUA libero of the year and other volleyball notes

Continuing in the vein of "high school classmates who are more successful than me", it was announced yesterday that my former high school volleyball teammate Gabe DeGroot earned the OUA libero of the year award [Guelph Mercury]. That's very impressive, as he's a CIS rookie. Before going to Guelph, Gabe was playing at King's College out in Edmonton (where other former Fraser Valley Christian players Joel VanHuizen and David Triemstra are still on the team). I ran into him earlier this year before a Gaels-Gryphons game and he said he was recruited by Guelph head coach Cal Wigston for his play in the college league; goes to show that you can find some quality talent in unconventional places. More impressive still is how well Gabe's adjusted to playing libero; I'm not sure where he was playing at King's, but he was primarily a setter with our high school team. It's great to see him come in and make an immediate impact in OUA volleyball, and according to Tony Saxon of the Guelph Mercury, it sounds like he'll be back next year.

That should be a very solid Gryphons team coming back next season. They did well this year before running into McMaster in the semi-finals, and they have an OUA All-Rookie team player in Winston Rosser and a second-team player in Kevin Stewart [Guelph Athletics]. It also goes to show the increasing parity [myself, Queen's Journal] in the OUA, which was further demonstrated this past week by Waterloo's upset of Western in the quarterfinals and narrow loss to Queen's in the semis. It's going to be a Queen's-McMaster clash in the finals yet again, but the other teams are getting closer, and that's a good thing for the state of volleyball in this province.

By the way, that final's going to be quite the battle, starting tonight at 7 p.m. here in Kingston. McMaster went 17-3 this year, while Queen's was 16-4. On the individual front, the Marauders have three OUA All-Stars [OUA release] (Jeremy Groenveld, Peter Hrkal and Nathan Groenveld), while the Gaels have two (Joren Zeeman and Jeff DeMeza]; all three of McMaster's players made the first team, while Zeeman was selected as a first-team all star and DeMeza was chosen for the second team. I'll be at tonight's game and should be able to put up a few thoughts after the game; I'm also hoping to go to Hamilton for the second and third (if needed) matches to provide coverage on those.

Welcome back, Greg!

Just a quick note that Greg Layson of the Guelph Mercury has resumed writing his Big Man On Campus blog. It's great to see Greg back in the blogging game: his site's a must-read for anyone following the Gryphons, and he has a lot of good league-wide coverage in football and basketball as well. Definitely worth a look.

Campus Corner: Men's volleyball wins in straight sets

Well, that was a surprise and a half: in what I had expected to be a protracted and hard-fought five-set duel between two 13-5 teams, the Gaels instead beat the Guelph Gryphons in straight sets Friday. The Gaels looked quite dominant at times, but I think it was more due to poor play from the Gryphons than a truly outstanding match on their part, as they never seemed to quite hit that top level they're very
capable of.

The first set was actually very close, but didn't produce a great clash due to sloppy play from both sides. By my count, Queen's committed five service errors in the set, while Guelph added six more: there were also far too many net violations, passing mistakes and hits out of bounds for both sides. The Gryphons took a 20-17 lead, but then let Queen's come back to tie, and the Gaels eventually claimed the set
27-25 off an odd play: outside hitter Joren Zeeman went up for a kill (at the middle position, of all places), and slammed the ball right into the Gryphon block, but it came off the block, bounced off his head, recrossed the net and fell for the crucial set-clinching point. He could be a soccer player with moves like that.

The second and third sets were a different story, though. Queen's play improved, while Guelph's dropped even lower. The teams were tied at 8 early on in the second frame, but Queen's went on a run and never looked back, winning 25-17 and 25-18 in the last two sets.

As an aside: OUA needs to work on their statistics and scores, as Neate discussed on The CIS Blog a while back. In the third set, one of Guelph's points wasn't counted on either the official flip chart or the big scoreboard, and the final score was given as 25-18. It's not like it was a reversed ruling or something that I didn't notice, either: one of the points in my (detailed) notes simply was not counted. Thus, I'm pretty confident the real score should have been 25-19, but I'll have to report 25-18 in my Journal piece on Tuesday, which grinds my gears a bit. In this case, it doesn't matter, as Queen's already wins the
tie-breaker against Guelph for playoff seeding (the teams split their head-to-head games, the first tie-breaker, so OUA turns to sets for and against between the teams, where the Gaels triumph 5-3). As far as I understand, the next tie-breaker would have been points for and against between the teams, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that a silly error like this could hurt a team's playoff seeding, which is all the more reason to get it right.

There were some interesting moments during the match, but one of the best came when a honest-to-goodness bat came out of the rafters and started buzzing the players. The bat then proceeded to circle the court and the gym for the next two minutes, which forced the referee to put the game on hold and also led to some hilarious scenes of the Gaels trying to shoo the bat away by waving sweatshirts and such. It reminded me of last year's fake Journal published by Golden Words which included a great send-up of our sports coverage entitled "Gaels Smoke Out Ravens at Jock Harty". In a normal issue, that would be the headline for a story about a Queen's hockey victory over Carleton: there, it was instead a fake story about a group of orientation week leaders ("Gaels") helping University personnel clear out some ravens that were roosting in the rafters.

According to libero Stu Hamilton (who's still recovering from a flu which later developed into pneumonia, and thus saw limited court time tonight), bats have buzzed the Gaels at practice before, but never during a game. Head coach Brenda Willis also said she's seen the bat before during an international volleyball competition at Queen's, where it apparently forced a similar stoppage in play. This new athletic centre is sounding better and better all the time...

The play of the game goes to the Gaels' fifth-year All-Canadian setter Devon Miller (who, by the way, was facing a vastly less experienced counterpart, Guelph rookie starting setter Jon Waito). Queen's was pretty much running away with the second set, and held a 23-15 lead when Miller made an all-out dive and just snuck his palm under a hit from Guelph, popping the ball up in the air. Zeeman delivered a capable set, and Niko Rukavina smacked down a left-side kill to give the Gaels the point. The play didn't mean a great deal in the long run, as the Gaels would almost assuredly have won the set and the match even if they'd conceded that point. What it did show, though, was Miller's hustle and determination: a good reason why an undersized guy like him has consistently been an All-Canadian. He's not only one of the best pure setters in Canada, but also brings a strong defensive and blocking game largely due to his fantastic work ethic and never-say-die attitude. That attitude translates as well, especially when it's one of the team's stars who holds it, and in my mind at least, it's a good reason the Gaels have last year's OUA Championship banner on the wall.

This was a nice turnaround for the Gaels after a disturbing weekend loss to Laurier in just four sets (which perhaps can be blamed on my unfortunately predictive blog post last Saturday night, which said "Queen's should have a pretty easy time of it against 4-14 Laurier ... but you never know when an upset will strike"). Hopefully, tonight's win will give the team some momentum to take into tonight's clash with the 19-0 McMaster Marauders. As Hamilton also pointed out, it's not just Mac that's vying for a perfect record: the Gaels are 9-0 at home this year, so one stretch of perfection is about to end tomorrow: all that remains to be determined is which one it will be.