BYU’s men’s volleyball team nearly opened the 2003 season with a dazzling sweep over Canada’s best team.

Instead, BYU’s error-riddled collapse in the second match allowed Red Deer College to escape with a split.

The collapse came one night after new BYU coach Tom Peterson had praised his team’s season-opening straight-game victory as having “no glaring errors.” After winning the first two games on Saturday, BYU made what Peterson called “stupid errors” in the final three games.

The loss means Cougar fans wanting to know just how good the Cougars will be this year will have to wait to find out the answer. For now, Peterson will try to ensure late-match collapses don’t become a trend.

“That’s going to happen to us a bunch if we don’t correct it in practice,” Peterson said.

Even after allowing Red Deer to storm back to tie the match at two games, BYU seemed in control when a Red Deer service error put them ahead 14-10. But untimely attacking errors caused the Cougars to blow four consecutive matchpoints, as Red Deer scored the final six points to escape with a 28-30, 26-30, 30-25, 30-23, 16-14 win.

Three of Red Deer’s final six points came when BYU either hit the ball out of bounds or into the net.

The catalyst behind the Red Deer comeback came when the Kings substituted their star player 6-foot-7 Daniel Soonias for the quicker 6-foot-2 Seth Schalk.

“We were late blocking their hitters with faster arm swing,” Peterson said. “We were very seldom in this nice spot where they didn’t have room to make a nice shot.”

The loss overshadowed a breakout performance by BYU sophomore middle blocker Michael Burke, who had 15 kills and a .737 attack percentage, which was the third highest percentage in school history.

Virtually ignored in the pre-season hype, Burke had a brilliant weekend, recording a total of a 24 kills while committing just two attacking errors.

On Friday night, senior outside hitter Jaime Mayol helped lead the Cougars to a 33-31, 30-22, 30-26 win in front of a near-capacity crowd. Mayol, who entered the game after senior outside hitter Luka Slabe suffered a quadriceps injury, had 11 kills to lead BYU on a night when the Cougars were hitting the ball especially well.

“Our team is deep; everybody is ready to play and wants to get on the court,” Mayol said.

The extent of Slabe’s injury was still not known following Saturday’s game, in which he did not participate. Peterson said he will not know how long Slabe will be out until his injury is reevaluated.

Red Deer really only challenged BYU in the first game. After the teams teetered back and forth, junior outside hitter Jonathon Alleman of BYU finished off the game with a line drive ace.

From there, the Cougars’ hitting, set up by sophomore setter Carlos Moreno, took over, and Red Deer failed to threaten the Cougars for the rest of the match.

The Cougars travel this weekend to face conference rival Stanford in a rematch of last year’s semifinal round of the Mountain Pacific States Federation tournament, which BYU won.
Copyright Brigham Young University 13 Jan 2003