THUNDER BAY – It’s been a tough stretch for the Lakehead women’s volleyball team, but a couple of early wins this season has them thinking the playoffs might be a possibility in 2024-25.
Head coach Haden Nichol guided his team to a 7-3 record during the preseason, then opened the OUA regular season with back-to-back road wins over the RMC Paladins, both straight-set affairs, before coming back to earth a bit this past weekend, swept on the road by the always-tough Windsor Lancers.
Lakehead will celebrate their home opener on Friday night against Trent University, followed by a rematch on Saturday night, both games being contested at the C.J. Sanders Fieldhouse.
Nichol said it’s a building process, the team finishing just 4-16 last year, a high-water mark for a Thunderwolves team who last won as many as six games in a season in 2017-18, and last made the playoffs in 2012-13, when they finished 9-9.
“It’s not just going to happen overnight,” Nichol said. “We’re not just going to walk into the gym and win an OUA championship right away, in the first couple of years here. We have a lot of good, young recruits, who are getting some playing time and really showing what the future might look like for the program.
“This season, just trying to push toward getting into the playoffs is a big goal for us. That’s something the girls were really on in August and said they want to do. We’re certainly taking the right steps and the right moves to get there. Now we just have to see how the season unfolds.”
Nichol is a believer.
The skill in the room is there to make a playoff push, and to be successful at it. The team just has to find a little more consistency on the court.
“We’ve had a lot of nice wins since I’ve been here, and now it’s about being able to put up consistent performances every weekend, win the matchups we’re supposed to win and take a couple teams by surprise.”
It’ll take a mixture of veteran talent and youngsters to get there, starting with left side Lauryn Langley, who on Tuesday was named the team’s athlete of the month for October.
“She’s definitely one of our bigger offensive weapons,” Nichol said.
Others he’s counting on are Surrey, B.C.’s Alysha Goundrey, another veteran hitter.
“And we have a couple of first years that will have to play some big roles if we want to be successful. Ashley Lawrence is a first-year libero who the league is already starting to take notice of, and Lola (Milohonic) on the right side is a big opposite that we’ve been missing in the program, and Reegan Aiken, from Winnipeg, is doing some fantastic things so far for us.”
Nichol said getting that winning mentality early has been a key so far.
“One hundred per cent. When we first got the schedule, it was a very big importance to us that we needed to grab that first weekend of regular-season play and hopefully try to catch some fire,” Nichol said. “
“Throughout the rest of the first semester we definitely have a bunch of extremely winnable games that we need to take advantage of and I feel pretty good about our level of play right now and where we’re at.”
Game time Friday and Saturday night against the Excalibur is 6 p.m.
