The Calgary Dinos didn’t want to see another fifth set.

They would have walked through fire — barefoot — just to avoid playing a fifth set for the third straight day at the CIS men’s volleyball championship at the Tournament Capital Centre.

Fortunately for the Dinos, a fifth set wasn’t in the cards — and no firewalking was necessary — as Calgary beat the Trinity Western Spartans in four sets (25-22, 25-21, 23-25, 27-25) in Sunday’s national final.

It’s the first CIS championship for the Dinos since 1993, and the fourth in the team’s history. Calgary also won in 1982 and 1989.

This one took a lot of work, especially in Calgary’s three matches at the CIS tournament.

Just to get into the final, the Dinos needed five sets to dispatch the Dalhousie Tigers in a Friday quarterfinal, before winning a five-set barnburner over the Alberta Golden Bears on Semifinal Saturday.

So when Sunday’s final came around, the Dinos wanted to get their national championship and get out of Dodge. They certainly looked that way in the first two sets, which they dominated.

“We knew we needed to bring our top performance,” said head coach Rod Durrant, who has now completed four seasons with the Dinos. “We talked about it — when you get the opportunity, you need to make the most of it. Our guys did that.”

Calgary never trailed in the first set, and came back from a 6-2 deficit early to win the second set quite easily.

The Dinos didn’t hit the lights out in those first two sets — their percentages were 23 and 26, respectively — but did a beautiful job defensively, making a few blocks and saving a bunch of tough digs. The Calgary defence did everything it could to make a strong Trinity Western team look ordinary.

“We worked really worked this year,” said Calgary’s Graham Vigrass, the tournament MVP who had 16 kills, two aces, 10 digs and two block assists on Sunday. “We knew (Trinity is) a strong team, but we knew that if we played like we could, we’d get the result we wanted.”

Of course, had Trinity Western played nearly as well Sunday as it did in a five-set upset of the Laval Rouge et Or on Saturday, the outcome of the final may have been different.

The Spartans had 16 services errors against Laval, but had given away 11 points on bad serves through two sets Sunday. Trinity Western ended with 17 service errors.

Spartans head coach Ben Josephson said his team lived by the sword and died by the sword.

“We choose to try to play aggressive — we choose to try to score the ball both from the baseline and on our swings,” said Josephson, whose Spartans will play host to the 2011 CIS championship. “You train your athletes to score points, not to wait for (the other team) to give away points.

“You’ve got to earn your championship, you don’t get it by default.”

The Spartans cleaned up their play in the third set, coming back from a 21-18 deficit to win it.

With the crowd behind them — there were about 1,000 people in the stands, about half of which was cheering for Trinity Western — the Spartans came back from a slow start in the fourth set to lead 22-20.

Durrant called a timeout, and the Dinos went on to win seven of the next 10 points and clinch the title.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know what (Durrant) said — I was just thinking about the game,” said Calgary setter Jay Blankenau, a tournament all-star. “We were pretty focused the whole time.”

Calgary’s comeback kept the Spartans from taking two sets of momentum into a 15-point fifth set.

“We’re thankful it’s over in four,” Durrant said, with a laugh.

“It would have been nice to put it away in the third,” Blankenau said, before pointing out that going the long way to a national title isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“We really learned how much work it takes to win a championship.”
mhunter@kamloopsnews.ca