By Jon Roe
The Dinos didn’t win a game last weekend, but head coach Jesse Knight is happy with the way his team is improving at this point in the season. The University of British Columbia Thunderbirds swept the Dinos in straight sets, but there’s really no shame in losing to a team that is 15-0, ranked first in the country and has only lost seven sets so far this year.
“I’m a really big believer in power hitters tend to win championships [and] we were able to hold [UBC’s] power hitters to low percentages,” Knight says.
Knight’s squad sits at 6-8 and in the seventh and final playoff spot in Canada West, but might be better than their record suggests. Two of their losses were in five-sets and three in four.
It’ll be a tough stretch to end the season for this young squad. Of their remaining six matches, their next four are against teams higher than them in the standings including this upcoming weekend at the University of Regina against the 9-5 Cougars. Knight is excited for this test and thinks his team gained confidence after playing well against the T-Birds.
“I think we shocked ourselves,” says Knight. “Some of the younger players were like, ‘Whoa, we can play with these guys.’ It’s an exciting thing as a coach because it’s now setting the table for what we do here to finish.”