Kara Frith led the Griffins with nine kills on Friday (Norman Bo photo).
Kara Frith led the Griffins with nine kills on Friday (Norman Bo photo).
October 25, 2025

Griffins fall flat in home opener, lose to Thompson Rivers in straight sets

Program Tickets Box Score Preview

Jason Hills 
For MacEwan Athletics 
 
EDMONTON – The energy from the fans at the David Atkinson gymnasium was high for the MacEwan Griffins home opener. 

But instead of feeding off the energy, they fell flat, and dropped a 3-0 decision (25-21, 25-9, 25-23) to the Thompson Rivers University Wolfpack on Friday night. 

Kara Frith led the Griffins with nine kills and six digs, while Payton Shimoda recorded 26 assists in the loss for MacEwan, who fell to 1-2 this season. 

Keira Gent and Hail Ward led TRU with 13 kills each. Ward led the Wolfpack with 12 digs and Libby Meldrum led TRU with 38 assists who opened their season with a victory. 

"We didn't pass the ball in transition or serve-receive well enough. They're a very physical team on the other side of the net, and we didn't match up well against them well enough," said Griffins head coach Chris Wandler. 

MacEwan and TRU battled to a tight opening set, but the Wolfpack were able to gain a little edge late sparked by an ace from Ward to eventually give TRU the set win. 

The Griffins had a strong opening set from middles Anika Buys and Alana Murr, who had three kills each. 

They finished with five and four kills respectively. 

"I thought our middle blockers were good tonight when they had an opportunity to swing. Anika was (.700 attack percentage) 5-for-7. Alana was 4-for 12 with one error. They were strong," said Wandler. 

"As much as our middle blockers were very efficient, we just didn't have the opportunity to give them the ball as much as we wanted to." 

It was a nightmare for MacEwan in the second set. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. TRU took a 2-1 lead and simply didn't look back as they went on a 16-4 run to blow the doors open, and the Griffins couldn't recover. 

"We needed to have that deep, dirty mentality today, and we just didn't have that. Our serve-receive game wasn't up to our standards," said Wandler. 

"It showed with our outside hitting. When you're not passing the ball well enough, outside hitters have got to realize that they're going to have a big-time block against them, and they need to go after the edges. 

"We didn't take advantage of the block, and we tried to go right through them at inopportune times." 

The Griffins showed some resolve in the third set, but for whatever reason, they were playing with a bit of nerves. They had some uncharacteristic breakdowns in areas of their game that are typically strengths. 

MacEwan led for the first half of the third set, but TRU stayed within reach. The Griffins chipped away at the lead and were able to tie the set at 22-22 after a big block from Murr, but they gave the lead right back on a sloppy service error, and the Wolfpack never relinquished the lead. 

"We missed a serve at 23, and that's a huge thing. We need to be smarter and get a good serve in; we don't need to try and get an ace. We need to put pressure on them in that spot," said Wandler. 

"You could see the nerves getting to us a little bit. They (team) were amped, and almost playing angry, and that's not a characteristic of our team." 

Wandler said he expects his veteran leaders to respond to this disappointing loss, and he hopes the Griffins can regroup and refocus like they did last weekend when they earned a split with the Calgary Dinos. 

"I'm not sure if they thought the success last weekend was going to spill over," said Wandler. 

"We have to learn from this. We have a veteran squad that needs to make sure they take all the lessons, the good, the bad and the ugly, and work to get better." 

MacEwan and TRU will wrap up their weekend series on Saturday at 3 p.m. at the David Atkinson gym.