It’s not every year that a team knows exactly where its season will end.
For the NAIT Ooks men’s volleyball team, that ending will unfold at home, in front of their fans. NAIT is hosting the Canadian Collegiate Athletics Association (CCAA) men’s volleyball championship tournament and the stakes are high — the Ooks have a chance to win their second national championship in three years. But more than just the chance at a title, the four-day stretch will be the last time this group chases something side by side.
“This is like the last-ditch effort. There’s no turning back, and it definitely gives you a really big sense of motivation,” says Ben Kieser, a veteran fourth-year player who was part of the team that won the team’s first national championship in a decade.
The players feel the pressure of a final chapter for the fourth and fifth-years who revived a program stalled by a decade-long championship drought. It’s also a defining moment for the first and second-years now tasked with carrying that standard forward. For Josh Watson, who joined the team in the same year as Kieser, that pressure is what’s driving the team’s energy heading into nationals.
“That’s why I think everyone’s bought into the team a lot this year,” says Watson. “We all know that those guys, that’s their last time in a NAIT jersey, and everyone wants to make it special.”
Building a legacy
Kieser and Watson are not the only ones whose careers could come to a close this month if they elect not to play their fifth year of eligibility, nor are they solely responsible for the program’s rise. But their timelines mirror the arc of this team.
They both arrived as rookies when the volleyball program’s legacy was still being rebuilt. They watched their older teammates lay the groundwork to re-establish the program as a national contender and grew alongside it.
Now, the roles have shifted.
Watson and Kieser are the veteran leaders the rookie players turn to when matches get tight. They are the ones who bear the weight of leading the program to success.
And with two years in a row where the Ooks failed to reach the podium at provincials, the men now have a chance at redemption on home turf.
“I think to get to nationals, to win nationals, it just takes a sense of family.”
Kieser says the challenge has helped the team grow, but they understand experience alone won’t be enough. If this group hopes to close its story with a national championship win on their home court, it will require the same thing that defined their championship run: a collective belief that the team is stronger together than any moment that tries to pull them apart.
“I think to get to nationals, to win nationals, it just takes a sense of family,” Kieser says. “When you’re on the court together, when things aren’t going your way, you have to understand you can get out of it.”
The lessons from the past few seasons have shaped how this group approaches the final stretch of its run together — a gradual process based on foundations formed by past team leaders.
“You have that year where you’re trying to figure it out on your own. Now we’ve come into this year, and we’re just growing into this position,” Kieser says.
And the team isn’t taking their chance for granted. They didn’t finish the season as planned — they placed sixth at the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference provincial championship.
They did win multiple individual awards, but without the guaranteed nationals spot that comes with hosting the tournament, the team would be in the bleachers instead of on the court. Inside the locker room, the players know the invitation alone means little once the matches begin.
“There’s no excuse to look at nationals like it’s a free in,” says Kieser. Hosting is a “privilege and an honour,” he says.
A new attitude for nationals
Consistency, Watson said, will be the difference this time. “We just need to stick to our guns. We need to be consistent,” Watson says. “In [college] volleyball especially, the most consistent team will win the game 80 per cent of the time.”
Watson’s idea that “consistency is very key” is echoed across the roster, and the team’s sense of brotherhood unites them.
“You have almost the whole team on the same page,” he said. “Everyone wants to leave everything they have out on the court, in practice, during workouts. It’s a fulfilling feeling knowing everyone is just all guns a-blazing for this last go.”
“My best memory of my life was that week in Victoria with my team, not just winning nationals, but being with the guys that week.”
That unity is the same ingredient the team believes carried them through their championship run two years ago. The parallel isn’t lost on Kieser, who sees the same dynamic forming again.
“Looking back, when we won nationals, it was a family, a brotherhood,” he says. He explains that at the first practice this year, no one needed to say much — everyone was “ready to go.”
“I would say everyone’s a captain, everyone’s a leader on this team, and we’re all there for each other 24/7, we hang out all the time,” says Kieser.
And as the national championship approaches, that type of unity is what the team hopes will guide them once more. Because the Ooks know how difficult the road to a title can be, they also know exactly what waits on the other side of it.
“I would say my best memory of my life was that week in Victoria with my team, not just winning nationals, but being with the guys that week is the best memory of my life,” says Kieser. “To be able to try and replicate that, or even knowing that we do have a shot, it’s such a good feeling. It hasn’t happened yet, obviously, we don’t know if it’s going to happen, but we are going to try our damn best to do that.”
When the final whistle blows, it will mean more than a trophy. It will mean the end of a final chapter that began long before that game.
These Ooks have had each others’ backs through dozens of late-night drives and countless hours put in getting to each destination. It’s a season that ends with a team playing for each other, one last time, hoping to end it exactly how they started back in 2024 — only this time, it will be on their home court.
