One year removed from their first trip to nationals in almost a decade, the Bisons women's volleyball team is back. And while their roster – ranked sixth at U SPORTS last year in a field of eight – retained every starter and key player from last season's fourth-place finish at UBC, rest assured, this is a far different group.
 
Not only are the Bisons the No. 1 seed for this year's tournament, fresh off of 38-year head coach Ken Bentley's first Canada West championship as bench boss, but they are mentally prepared for whatever is thrown their way.
 
"I went down the rabbit hole of YouTube a couple of nights ago watching our Mount Royal first round match last year. I was watching that team play versus this team, and we look so much younger than we are now in a way and how we played," he reflected.
 
"We did such a great job last year as a younger group getting to nationals for the first time in a bit. The difference in our play now, in our poise, in our consistency, we've worked really hard to be a really good team. Input equals output. We put it in. We get to reap the rewards."
 
Libero Julia Arnold – part of the esteemed 1000 digs club as a Bison including a CanWest-leading 347 this year – made it perfectly clear at the beginning of the 2023-24 campaign that "it doesn't matter what we did last season."
 
"We need to re-establish who we are without getting any outsider perspective, and focus on what we need to do."
 
Well, who are the Bisons you ask?
 
They are an incredible crop of student-athletes with heart, passion and dedication. Their team fitness has put them in a position to stay level in their play from the first point in the opening set to the last point in the fifth, and they are among the best in the nation at their positions.

This team set a regular season school record with 20 wins, helping the Herd advance to nationals in back to backk years for the first time since 2001-02.
 
Above all else, they are "every dayers," according to Bentley.
 
"No matter how you feel, and you can feel all kinds of things. You can be stressed in school, you can be stressed personally. You can have nagging injuries. But when you come every day, can you put your best foot forward every single day? Can you be persistent? Can you be consistent? Can you show up and move the needle? Even if it's one percent," he said.
 
"Can you find a way to be a good teammate, to be supportive, and to find a way to move your game forward, just a little bit."
 
A fitting analogy to complement Bentley's quote, is how a Bison reacts when a storm is coming.
 
Despite a challenging road ahead, the Bison takes the storm head on, travelling directly into its path. It doesn't shy away from adversity, it continues to press on, just like the Herd have all year.
 
'There's a huge amount of trust'
Week one of the current campaign was business as usual. A two-game sweep over Regina where five different players posted double-digit kills while not giving up a set.  
 
And then the Bisons ran into the Fraser Valley Cascades.
 
In 2022-23, UFV was the only team to beat Manitoba at home in the regular season. They finished 18-6 in the conference standings, two spots ahead of the 14-10 Bisons. And two weeks into the following campaign, they "brought us back to reality," said Bentley.
 
Last season's conference and national Player of the Year Gabrielle Attieh had 25 kills, including 17 in game two, and the Cascades dug the ball 118 times with 17 service aces. They added 42 assisted blocks, including 28 in game one, in wins of 3-1 and 3-0.
 
Just like that, the highly-touted Bisons were 2-2. It was clear there was more work to do.
 
"We were a really good team in terms of a group of players, unified. We weren't a very good volleyball team, at the time. We were still sorting things out," Bentley added.
 
"We had a new system of play that we were working on, and it was kind of a rough start. It was a really important weekend for our team. It just told us we had a lot of work to do, ultimately. We humbly accepted the lesson and went back to work."
 
Manitoba promptly won their next 12 games in a row, including a sweep of perennial contender Trinity Western – the first time they'd won both matches against the Spartans in 14 years.
 
They also took a game against defending national champion UBC after the winter break, and they headed into their second-last series of the regular season against Alberta firing on all cylinders.
 
Game one was a 3-1 win, but game two was a 3-2 loss.
 
The latter hurt for multiple reasons, but the most damaging was the loss of Canada West and U SPORTS Player of the Year Raya Surinx.
 
The nation's kills and kills per set leader, and one of the best servers in Canada, would be gone until the Canada West final.
 
But during an immense period of adversity, heading straight into a storm, the Bisons stuck together.
 
"Never lose faith in your team, your teammates, or your training," was the message from Bentley.
 
"Stay in the moment, maintain your poise, never think about the next set, only the next play."
 
Setter Katreena Bentley – who established a new CanWest record with 983 assists and was an all-star – was automatic as usual during the following three weeks without Surinx.
 
She didn't have any less than 37 assists in the Herd's run to their first CanWest title, including 47 in the gold medal game against UBC. Bentley also finished sixth in the conference playoffs in digs, with 56, including a post-season career high of 19 against the T-Birds.
 
Overall in the post-season the Bisons lost just three sets, while knocking off the only team that had beaten them at home over the last two years, in UFV. They finished the campaign undefeated at IGAC, at 15-0.
 
As a team, Manitoba led CanWest with 352 playoff digs, while Bentley was the post-season leader in assists pet set (10.10) and total assists (202), and libero Julia Arnold led all players with 108 digs.
 
Offensively, captain Light Uchechukwu finished fourth in CanWest with 58 kills during the playoffs, while Team Canada selection Ella Gray – who had the game-winning kill in the conference championship – was just behind her with 55.
 
Left and right side Andi Almonte, one of the most lethal players in Canada with her precision, took her game to the next level, including 49 kills, while middles Eve Catojo and Brenna Bedosky combined for 67.
 
In the regular season all of these standouts had at least 100 kills.
 
"I think there's a huge amount of trust. When I got injured, I was just like wow this sucks. But not for a second did I think about what's going to happen to the team," said Surinx.
 
"We have so many people. Andi can play at any position, she can probably play libero if she had to. We just have such a deep roster that stuff like that doesn't affect us as much as it could other teams."
 
With the Player of the Year back for the CanWest championship, Manitoba once again displayed their all-purpose skill-set. Surinx, Gray and Uchechukwu all recorded 15 kills.
 
On defence, five different players posted double-digit digs, including Bentley, whose 19 were the second most in a game in her career.


 
"I think the true constant for us would just be our sense of composure through it all. We played pretty steady volleyball and stayed in a certain bandwidth. There wasn't a lot of fluctuation emotionally in our game. I think that's been a real strength for our team historically," added Bentley.
 
"If you were to look at a lot of top athletes and coaches, there's a familiar refrain there. It's really tough to perform at your best without a sense of composure. We often talk about responding and not reacting. I think that would be the biggest true constant."
 
'We don't take anybody for granted'
Now, Manitoba faces the ultimate goal, bringing home a national title for the first time in a decade. Their climb to the summit begins tomorrow at 11 AM CT against No. 8 seed Saint Mary's (catch the game live on CBC Sports on YouTube, the CBC Gem app or cbcsports.ca).
 
Legendary basketball coach John Wooden said it best in a quote that Bentley showed his squad in the lead-up to tomorrow's quarterfinal: "the ideal is an ever-mounting graph line that peaks with your final performance. There will be difficulty and adversity to overcome, but that is necessary to become stronger."
 
The 14-6 Huskies out of the Atlantic Conference went to three games against the eventual AUS champion Acadia Axemen, including a comeback in game two where they were down 2-0.
 
Saint Mary's came on strong in the second half of the season, including a six-game win streak and 6-1 record in January.
 
Their roster features AUS MVP and First Team All-Canadian outside hitter Olivia Bell, who led the AUS with 238 kills. Conference all-star hitters Emilia Mikanovich and Megan Bruhm also finished fourth and sixth in kills, with 198 and 190, while Bell was third in the AUS with 29 aces.
 
The Bisons beat the Huskies 2-0 in the pre-season, but the two sides have never met at nationals. Regardless of the opponent, Bentley and the Bisons are prepared for what lays ahead.
 
"We don't take anybody for granted. We're going to prepare the same way regardless of who we're playing."