Strong season for Trent Excalibur women's volleyball
It's the best performance since the team rejoined OUA in 2016.
By Mike Davies/Peterborough Examiner
The Trent Excalibur women's volleyball team took a big step forward this season.
The Excalibur made the OUA playoffs for the first time and won a program high four games in 2021-22. While a 4-9 record may not look impressive it does mark the best season for Trent since rejoining the OUA in 2016.
The Excalibur also boasted the No. 1 blocker in the nation. Peterborough native Taya Knier led all of U Sports in blocks in her first season with the Excalibur.
"This anchors a change in where the program is going," said Excalibur women's head coach Rusty Haines. "We're starting to get more and more interest from top level athletes that we may not have had the opportunity to talk to. Trent has always had an incredible academic reputation but now we're starting to see athletes that are looking at us for their athletic goals as well."
The Excalibur's 2020-21 season was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and this year the OUA had a shortened season, 13 games instead of 19, and play was limited to within the East Division. With only five players returning from the last time they had a season Haines said it was hard to know what to expect.
"The expectation was to hopefully just have some semblance of a season and competition," said Haines, who took over the program in 2018.
"We knew we had a good group of talent coming in. Unfortunately the athletes who were currently second-year athletes this year didn't get the opportunity to cut their teeth in OUA competition last year. A lot of things were relatively unknown.
"We didn't have expectations. We tried to maintain our focus on recruiting the best player we could and were challenged with the fact we weren't able to go out and see those players like we had in the past. We relied heavily on online viewing, videos, highlight reels and game tapes."
Trent earned three wins against RMC and one against Nipissing who eliminated the Excalibur in the opening round of playoffs on March 16 in North Bay in straight sets.
Haines was confident they had recruited well but with 14 newcomers to the lineup he wasn't sure how long it would take for them to adjust to the OUA level.
"It's a real learning curve they have to follow and was pretty steep for some of them because they didn't have the experience," he said.
"We had success against RMC who are a conference rival. Although we didn't have success in the win column against some other teams we were starting to see some of the flashes of quality we were hoping we could start to string together into something more tangible."
As the youngest team in the league, Haines is hoping to build on this season.
"With only five athletes graduating the future is really bright," he said, noting half the club's regulars were first-year players.
"That just shows me we have nothing but room to grow."
Knier was voted to the OUA East All-Rookie Team. Her 1.26 blocks per set led U Sports.
"That's a huge accolade for a first-year player to have that kind of impact," he said.
"It shows we're starting to gain a reputation for attracting some real quality athletes. We recruited seven athletes last year and all of them were challenging for playing time and starting positions."
Fifth-year left side Genna Saunders was voted OUA Second-Team All-Star. Fifth year libero Brooke Driscoll won the OUA East Award of Merit presented to an athlete who in addition to their commitment to athletics contributes to the life of the school and community.