Grade-point anecdotes — Dickson making most of fifth year with Wesmen

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This article was published 06/11/2019 (2146 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rylie Dickson was ready to close the book on her U Sports women’s volleyball career last season and move on after a long four years at the University of Winnipeg.

She was well on her way to a four-year biochemistry degree with a crystal-clear vision of her future. But her application for optometry school at the University of Waterloo was rejected this time around.

She plans to apply again for next year, but is glad to be back for her fifth season.

“It has actually worked out really well be cause this year has been great so far with volleyball, but hopefully next year I can get in,” Dickson said via phone interview on Tuesday.

The Killarney product gets to pack just a little more home-court action in this year, as the 53rd annual Wesmen Classic is featuring women’s volleyball for the first time.

She also gets one more Canada West match close to home, and that’s Thursday evening against the Brandon University Bobcats at the Healthy Living Centre at 6 o’clock.

“Definitely more of my family comes in for the Brandon game. Just being in Brandon in general, there’s more familiar faces, the people in the crowd, the refs,” Dickson said. “Honestly I love playing in Brandon, I’m very comfortable in the Healthy Living Centre. Seeing people that I know from home, lots of people attend Brandon University, both my step-siblings go there, so it’s nice to see people from home.”

The five-foot-nine setter spent her rookie year as a backup to Jayme Menzies on an 8-16 Wesmen team that missed the eight-team playoffs by two matches. Since then, Dickson has played in all but two of her team’s 76 regular-season matches, including four straight losses to open this season against the defending national champion UBC Thunderbirds and U Sports top-ranked Trinity Western University Spartans.

Over that time, the Wesmen have just seven regular-season victories and still have a ways to go to turn that around.

Still, Dickson has a lot to look forward to and has certainly enjoyed this season so far.

“All my teammates, they are such great people. They’re all so motivated and hard-working, and we just keep each other going,” she said. “It’s definitely tough when you’re losing that much, but we’ve had points throughout the years where we were so close. We know we can play better, we know we can beat some of those teams and just haven’t found a way to perform in those instances.

“I think a big thing for us was to say ‘OK, back to the drawing board. What can we do to better prepare our selves for those games?’”

Dickson also got a treat that any setter in Manitoba should be thrilled to have, when the U of W hired Phil Hudson as interim head coach after firing 24-year bench boss Diane Scott after last season.

Hudson, who recently retired from teaching physical education at Winnipeg’s Dakota Collegiate, has coached for the better part of four decades. He led the West Kildonan Wolverines to a pair of AAAA varsity boys’ provincial championships, then took Dakota teams to another five titles, the most recent being last season before handing the reins over to his son, Ryan.

He had a stint as an assistant coach with the national women’s volleyball team in 2005, and served as the interim head coach for the University of Manitoba men’s team in 2007, when Garth Pischke took a sabbatical.

In summers, he has held setting camps at Dakota, bringing university players in to help high school setters hone their skills going into their own training camps. It certainly helped to have three children of his own all go on to set for U Sports programs — his oldest daughter Chelsea played for Trinity Western, Ryan stayed home to play for the Bisons before transferring to Hamilton’s McMaster University and youngest daughter Sara suited up for Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont.

So, Phil knows a thing or two about running an offence.

“The way he coaches is so positive. I’ve changed a lot of different things this year because of him. He has taught me, for example, how to set off of one foot, and think about the game differently. It has only been three months with him but he has already taught me so much. I’m just really excited to see how far I can get in the last five months I have with him,” Dickson said. “Jump setting every single ball, I didn’t used to do that …he taught me how to jump serve again this year.

“He has taught our team how to swing block, which is new for all of us, and just how we think about the game, picking up cues, looking at what the hitter is doing, thinking about what play we’re going to run next.”

On and off the court, Dickson has learned a lot about what it takes to be a student-athlete as well.

“I just think that no game ever comes easy. You got to really work every point, every set if you’re going to get the win. Every team trains so hard every day so nothing comes easy … there’s no breaks,” she said.

“In terms of school, first of all, time management. With practices every day, you learn so many time management skills. With that comes work ethic as well. For example, if you’re playing on the weekend and only get a limited amount of time to study, you better be efficient with those hours.”

Dickson said it started to set in that it was her last year at Winnipeg’s home pre-season tournament at the end of September. With one last chance to make a push for the post-season, the rest of this semester is critical to try and take advantage of a softer schedule.

The Wesmen play the Bobcats Thursday then again in Winnipeg Saturday, then visit the University of Alberta Nov. 15 and 16, and play a home-and-home with Manitoba the following weekend.

“We’ve played all these next three teams in pre-season, and we were able to beat each of these teams at least once in pre-season, so we know we can play with these teams and we know we can beat them,” Dickson said. “We need to get some wins in these next few weekends and we’re all very eager.”

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