Hamilton, ON- Nathan Janzen says it time and time again – and he means it. Winning in this league is really really hard. The McMaster Marauders women’s volleyball head coach knows that from all his years as an assistant coach. He really knows that from this season – his first as an OUA head coach.
He knows that from his team’s back-to-back losses to the Queen’s Gaels in late January. He knows that from his team’s split with the two-time defending OUA champion Brock Badgers on Feb. 2 and 3.
Yes, there will be setbacks and adversity. But they have to use those setbacks as opportunities to learn and improve, Janzen noted.
“That’s what growth really looks likes,” he said. “Growth is never linear and easy. Growth is never easy.”
Growing means hardships, failure and tough moments. Growing means rebounding from those moments and punching back – which the Marauders did with their four-set victory over the Brock Badgers on Feb 2. Growing means facing more hardships soon thereafter – once again, a reminder of how it’s never linear.
What the Marauders are learning now is different than the start of the year. Back in the summer and fall, the focus was mainly on technical and tactical aspects, according to their head coach. Now, it’s about the mental challenges of bouncing back.
Janzen and the team talk about failure quite a bit – how important it is to the learning process. He sees the players understand how hard it is to grow and improve.
At the high-performance level of university volleyball, the margins get thinner and thinner. “You have to work extremely hard for one per cent [of improvement],” Janzen noted. “That one per cent requires failure that does not feel good.”
Janzen and the team doesn’t just talk about it though. They build those opportunities for failure into their practices. They create difficult situations – just like the ones players would face in a game. “They have to find solutions to get that one per cent,” he said.
Janzen saw how his team managed those moments of failure within their first game against Brock. They rebounded from losing the first set to winning three in a row.
Outside hitter Victoria Potvin experienced that adversity. She and her teammates learned how they were going to be in tough situations. “It’s those moments where we really have to stay together as a team and keep pushing to overcome it,” she said. Potvin saw them truly do that in their win against the Badgers.
What does that mean for Potvin? She knows she has to do everything she can to support the team – even when she’s not on the court. That means cheering and encouraging her teammates from the bench. That means bringing that energy onto the court when she comes on as a sub.
There’s adversity peeking its head again right around the corner. The following day after beating Brock, the Marauders once again found themselves in some close sets. This time, they couldn’t pull it out – losing the first two 25-22 and 25-23 before dropping the third one 25-17.
They faced an improved Brock team – one which they were expecting. Potvin knew going in that it was going to be a tough game. “We are going to have to fight and push and stay together as a team and be even stronger,” she noted. Potvin knew the Badgers were going to come back stronger – which they did.
Even with Brock playing better than before, Janzen noticed how McMaster was still managing the game well…until they reached the 20-point mark of the sets. Then, they were hitting balls out of bounds while their opponents weren’t. Both teams finished with 34 kills but they had 28 attacking errors to the Badgers’ 14.
Janzen pointed out they hit roughly triple the number of balls out of bounds than Brock. They lost by 13 points. “That’s the game,” he said. “To play at the highest level, you can’t hit 16 to 18 balls out of bounds.”
Libero Hayley Brookes saw the little things start to add over the course of the three sets. Block misses. Hitting the ball out of bounds. Their serve-receive could have been a bit better. Brock attacked those little things. “We just got to work on taking care of the ball more on our side,” Brookes noted.
How do they grow from this? It starts in practice. Janzen’s thinking of creating some creative drills where players have to score a certain amount of points in a certain amount of attempts. They’ve done so before. That will help. However, he knows how hard it is to mimic the competitiveness of real-life game situations.
How well the team responds to this latest stretch of adversity will be seen in those games. The nationally eighth-ranked Marauders have just played the fifth-ranked Gaels and second-ranked Badgers in four straight matches. These will be the calibre of teams they will face in the OUA playoffs and nationals.
Janzen hopes they learn from it. “This is what learning really looks like,” he said. “It has a bunch of setbacks and hardships and tough moments – and this is what it takes to be, to play, at the highest level.”
Brookes sees it as a sign of how much they still need to grow. She knows they can bounce back and keep fighting. She also knows how hard they must work and how many extra hours they must put in to do so.
After the past two weekends, Janzen knows how good they have to be to beat teams like Queen’s and Brock.
Perhaps they will learn from it and rebound in their next game against the Waterloo Warriors on Feb. 9. Perhaps they will show all they’ve learned and grown – that one per cent or even more – if they play Brock or Queen’s in the playoffs. “I think we’re handling it the right way,” Janzen noted.
Don’t be surprised if there’s more setbacks along the way though. After all, as Janzen will remind you, winning and growing in the OUA is never easy.
Featured Image: Kevin Lassel/McMaster Athletics