Kara Frith had six kills for the Griffins on Saturday (MRU Athletics photo).
Kara Frith had six kills for the Griffins on Saturday (MRU Athletics photo).
February 2, 2025

Buys nets record, Griffins show improvements, but loss to Cougars eliminates them from playoff contention

Box Score

Jefferson Hagen
MacEwan Athletics 

CALGARY – While the Griffins cleaned up a lot of stuff from the previous night, so did the Mount Royal Cougars.

The net result was a similar straight-sets loss for MacEwan (25-20, 25-23, 25-21) that drops them to 2-14 and officially eliminates them from playoff contention.

Although MacEwan has four games remaining, the best they could do is run the table and pull even with Calgary (6-10) for the final playoff spot if the Dinos lose their last four. But Calgary would still hold the points tiebreaker under that scenario.

MRU improves to 11-5 and is solidly in fifth in Canada West, heading into their final four games of the season.

"We played a little bit better, but so did Mount Royal," said Griffins head coach Chris Wandler. "We cut down on all those controlled errors we talked about last night, so that's definitely a positive for us. We had a little bit more contribution from all our pin hitters tonight. 

"But in the end, we made a couple really tight errors in critical times, later in each of the sets. That definitely was the difference."

Middle blocker Anika Buys broke the program record for the most blocks by a Griffins rookie in a Canada West campaign on her first one of the night in Set 1 and went on to add two more, along with five kills. She topped Mckenna Stevenson's record of 35, set in 2015-16 and now has 38 with four matches left.

"That's a pretty cool thing to do in your first year in the program," said Wandler of the Niverville, Man. Product. "Kudos to her. She goes home to Manitoba next weekend, so that will be pretty neat for her."

Both Alyshia Bryks and Arden Butler had eight kills to pace the Griffins, Kara Frith added six kills, an ace and eight digs, and setter Payton Shimoda had 23 assists and two aces.

"Kara had a really good match," said Wandler. "Mount Royal went at her passing-wise like 35 times. It could have been over 50% (of their serves) and Kara passed really well. She attacked the ball a little bit better than she did last night. She stands out as a better performance.

"Payton had a couple of really big blocks at critical times. And Alyshia had another solid game. There were definitely some shining moments for us, but Mount Royal's really strong in the middle and they attack the ball. Emma Boyd is just an unstoppable force. She had 14. They're very dynamic and explosive in the middle."

The 6-foot-2 Boyd led the Cougars with 14 kills on a .435 attacking percentage and accounted for 18.0 points in just three sets. Bronwyn Davies-Neira added 11 kills and Lexi Herrod had 38 assists.

MacEwan will visit Manitoba for a pair of games next weekend.