National champion Bobcats stole show

There was no cause for debate this year.

It was all but decided on March 23.

The Brandon University Bobcats men’s volleyball team is the Mike Jones team of the year, an honour the Brandon Sun awards annually to a Westman squad that achieves massive success, some years at the provincial level, others even bigger.

The Bobcats set the stage and then took it by storm, capturing the U Sports national championship on home court for the first time.

A team that started the season with dreams bigger than its ability achieved heights few outside the program thought were possible will forever go down as one of the Wheat City’s greats.

“What stands out to me is our dedication,” said current Bobcats captain Liam Pauls. “Winning nationals was lots of years in the making. It didn’t just happen over three days; we were talking about it before we even came here.

“The dedication from the players and the dedication from our fans to support us that much, that’s the key word that describes it.”

• • •

BU had originally been awarded the 2021 national tournament, but that season was cancelled due to COVID-19. With the next few bids awarded elsewhere, the school’s first chance to host the men’s event was pushed back four years.

That meant long-term planning behind the scenes to prepare, but also for the athletes. Riley Grusing joined the Bobcats in 2020 as a fourth-year college transfer who could make an immediate impact on a national-contending team.

When that season was cancelled, and he decided to change his career path into education, he realized he’d have four more years of school and opted to redshirt for two full seasons so that he could play his last one the year Brandon was hosting.

Pro-ready import Philipp Lauter stuck around to cap his career at nationals as well.

Entering the 2024-25 season, there were a few strong championship contenders.

At the midpoint, more emerged.

The Bobcats were in neither category.

But they weren’t concerned in the slightest. Head coach Grant Wilson said the team’s approach all year was about preparing each step of the way to play its three best matches at nationals.

That meant some stars checking their egos at the door and watching other guys fill their roles more often than they otherwise would.

“What we did well and what brought us success is everyone bought into the same goal,” said starting setter JJ Love.

“It’s easy to say the goal is to win nationals when you’re hosting but there was not a lot of drama, not a lot of guys going separate ways. We were all one team going the exact same way. If you weren’t playing, you still wanted the best for the guy ahead of you.

“I look back and think how much we became a family, that group. We were just so close-knit, and it was awesome to see.”

BU tweaked its lineup and tried some unconventional tactics it may not have if it felt like it was in do-or-die territory. Wilson didn’t know what ideas would come in handy later, but the only way to gain trust in a lineup or decision was to try it in a game situation.

Wilson worked with both Riley Brunet and Chris Bryant in the second middle blocker spot, along with Lauter. He rolled through a few options at libero and threw in a late-set wrinkle where backup setter Kale Fisher served for Grusing, turning Love into an attacker for a few big points.

Wilson also had to figure out who the third outside hitter was, should Tom Friesen’s nagging knee injury flare up at nationals, as it did seemingly all season.

“I want to give props to our coaching staff,” Love said. “I think our coaching staff had to make a lot of tough decisions on what worked best for our group.

“We were not the ideal group looking in at it. We’re not all the perfect players; we all have our flaws and I think our coaching staff really had to make some tough decisions and risk a lot because if it didn’t work, they would look really stupid. They made the right decisions, trusted their gut, and we obviously trust what the coaching staff says.”

• • •

BU’s season was a perfect example of the end justifying the means.

The process wasn’t all that smooth, though. The Bobcats only managed two weekend sweeps all season, and both were against teams in Canada West’s bottom four.

The Bobcats finished 10-10, splitting the majority of their weekends. Interestingly, three of their four home-court splits were against the teams they met at nationals. But even though two of those were against teams ranked No. 1 in the country at a time in Alberta and Winnipeg, Pauls didn’t see them as successful outings.

“When we beat those teams in the regular season, I don’t think it was as much of a relief as everybody thought it was. It was more of an expectation. That group had really high expectations for ourselves.” Pauls said.

“We split a lot that year when we felt like we could have won two. That was a disappointment because winning was the expectation.

“Maybe on paper we weren’t ranked as high as some teams but we felt like we had the skills we needed. The guys we had were more than capable of taking us to a national final and they did that.”

One of Brandon’s 0-2 weekends came on the road against the mighty UBC Thunderbirds early in the season.

BU finished in sixth place, earning a return trip to Vancouver to face UBC in the best-of-three quarterfinals.

Once again, the T-Birds swept the Bobcats. That meant BU could be ranked no higher than seventh at nationals due to a list of principles the seeding committee is supposed to follow.

While UBC was Brandon’s kryptonite, the Bobcats caught a break when the Thunderbirds fell 3-2 to the Alberta Golden Bears in the final four, then were reverse-swept by the Saskatchewan Huskies in the bronze-medal match for the last nationals berth.

• • •

On one hand, the Bobcats walked into the first round of nationals as underdogs. They were the lowest seed, facing the Canada West champion Winnipeg Wesmen.

But they walked in with a strong lineup and the peace of mind that if anyone struggled, they had battle-tested veterans ready to step in at any time.

“It was huge. Every opportunity those guys got early in the year was very purposeful and it gave them opportunities maybe they wouldn’t and gave them valuable experience and confidence,” Wilson said.

“It gave us the depth we needed on home court in March to be able to make some of those moves at crucial times.

“Those moves paid off in spades.”

The gap between the Bobcats and the seven teams that qualified wasn’t nearly as large as some thought. BU wasn’t on the U Sports top 10 list by the end, but was just one spot out.

As the national tournament showed, with Canada West teams finishing first, second, third and fifth, it would have been more accurate to place about seven teams from the country’s best league in the rankings.

And when it comes down to one match with a massive Healthy Living Centre crowd backing the hosts, coaches’ polls, records, statistics and seeds mean nothing.

The Bobcats had to open against first-team all-Canadian Isaiah Olfert, and allowed him to post a match-high 12 kills, but neutralized the top seed to the tune of 29 kills and 22 errors, including 10 Bobcat blocks.

Grusing led BU with 10 kills while the team made 31 while only committing 12 errors.

Brandon won 3-0 (25-19, 25-19, 25-22).

“I can’t believe how well Tom played Night 1. I was really impressed with how he came in and finished the ball, scored efficiently,” Love said.

• • •

Saskatchewan was up next, once again an opponent boasting a first-team all-Canadian attacker in opposite Emmett Graham.

The hard-hitting lefty led the Huskies past the Ontario University Athletics champion Queen’s Gaels in the first round, and had his team rolling through two sets against the Bobcats.

Brandon was a set away from playing for a bronze medal and talking about moral victories, two things most true competitors can only pretend to enjoy.

When BU was on the brink of going down 2-0, Wilson swapped Brunet out for Bryant and kept the Calgary product in the lineup for the rest of the weekend.

Right after he hit the floor, Love knew the six-foot-eight veteran was ready.

“It was (Australian Jacob) Baird front row. Chris had three blocks in one play, and we ended up scoring the point,” Love said. “You could just see his head swivelling back and forth. He came in so dialled, knowing what he needed to do and it was just so cool to see.”

Brandon won a narrow third set to extend the match, then absolutely dominated the next two. Bryant finished with three kills, three blocks and three aces while Grusing and Pauls tied for a match-high 18 kills.

While the Huskies looked like the better team most of the way, the Bobcats found a way to win 3-2 (21-25, 20-25, 25-23, 25-15, 15-10).

“Sometimes stat sheets don’t tell the full story,” Pauls said.

“We took a lot of pride in those details and that’s what higher-level teams start to do. We were getting good cover balls, making good out of system sets, the stat sheet might not show that but that’s something we take lots of pride in.

“Hitting percentages or whatever stat you want to look at don’t tell the full story. We didn’t let them tell the story that weekend.”

• • •

The final matchup was the perfect movie script: the defending national champion, a group of guys that literally dubbed themselves the “Bad News Bears,” against the team from the smallest city in the league.

“A team that’s won nationals plenty of times, they have the player of the year (Isaac Heslinga),” Love said. “We came out and just had that confidence in ourselves.

“Skill wasn’t really a factor; it was more just belief we had in each other and the system we were trying to run.”

The sold-out crowd of 1,800 roared like never before as Love and Bryant blocked Heslinga twice in a row before Love added two kills to lead 19-15, pushing BU to a 1-0 lead.

The whole time, BU avoided the cliché of treating it like any other match. Instead, it revelled in the moment it spent months preparing physically, tactically and psychologically to make the most of.

“I love seeing all the different camera angles there were; there were all the media people, and it made volleyball seem like it was the Super Bowl in that exact moment. Everyone was there and it was just so cool to be a part of,” Love said.

Alberta was still in it and made that clear with a strong push late in the second set. Setter Luke Weddell absolutely fed Heslinga and no one else down the stretch to push his team to a 1-1 tie.

The third set had a little bit of everything, and was the only time all weekend Brandon went to extra points. It stayed ahead in crunch time, though, and capitalized on its fourth set point when Love and Lauter stuffed Dylan Martens.

The fourth set was barely close at all. Lauter pounded kill after kill as the Bobcats doubled the Bears at 12-6, nearly doing so again at 19-10.

You can say no lead is safe, but this one was.

Wilson stayed locked in until the final whistle, but watching the matches back, he was overwhelmed with gratitude for the support from the fans, especially the alumni, giving everything they had just like they did for the years they played for him.

“All you had to do was look across the gym at the guys with the hard hats and the buckets and everybody cheering loud. Those were all guys that wore the uniform, they gave everything to this program and they came close,” Wilson said of the 2019 national finalists in attendance.

“To have them here to support that run — and our team felt it for sure, the love and support from our alumni and people connected to the program — it truly pushed us over the finish line.”

Heslinga finished with more than double any Bobcat’s kill count at 25, but no other Bear hit double-digits while four of the five BU attackers did.

The final score was 3-1 (25-20, 22-25, 28-26, 25-17).

Love was the player of the game, while Lauter was named tournament MVP with Pauls and Grusing earning tournament all-star nods.

• • •

In the locker room, after Wilson brought the Tantramar Trophy in and the players showered him with water, the head coach took out his U Sports coach of the year ring from 2019.

He told the team that year that he would trade it in for a national championship ring in a heartbeat.

Now, he has both.

As young as Wilson is at heart, he knows he’s much nearer to the end of his coaching career than the start. He admitted he was coming to terms with the idea that he might retire without the one achievement he desired most.

Since he was promoted from assistant to head coach in 2012, Wilson has been as calculated as they come during interviews.

But reflecting on what it meant to reach his coaching pinnacle, the Brandon-born-and-raised man welled up with tears.

“Give me a second,” Wilson uttered. “It was overwhelming, honestly. Physically exhausted, mentally exhausted, but just so much gratitude.

“All the support was amazing. The people I got to talk to, the messages that I received from across the world, from alumni, it was pretty special. Probably meant more than anything else.”

The days that followed were a whirlwind, including visits with Mayor Jeff Fawcett, a parade and dozens of trophy visits with sponsors around the community.

However, it didn’t take long for Wilson’s focus to shift to the future.

“How are we going to do this again?” he asked.

“That’s been at the forefront of my mind as to how we can continue to recruit and build this program to put ourselves in that situation as often as possible.

“We’re headed in the right direction, which may seem strange when we’re sitting at 3-7, but people that know our team and know our situation know this is a pretty solid team still. The core of our team and the recruits coming in are really, really promising.”

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com