What a combo they've been! With senior setter Julia Tays (front) and freshman right side Brooke Dexter (foreground) developing a unique chemistry this season, Simon Fraser has beaten some of the best teams in NCAA Div. 2 volleyball. (Photo by Paul Yates property of Simon Fraser athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Volleyball

SFU Volleyball 2021: With Seniors Night weekend on tap, who knew that Simon Fraser’s ‘X’ factor would be it’s well-hidden group of third-year freshmen!

BURNABY — When the Simon Fraser volleyball team finally de-camped from its endless months of limited practice inside the West Gym and eventually stepped off a plane in California over the first week of September to open its 2021 season, who knew that its X factor would be its inexperience?Huh?“When you have all of these […]

Simon Fraser volleyball will return just two seniors for a hopeful 2021-22 GNAC season, and setter Julia Tays (left) and libero Bianca Te have epitomized the character and leadership needed to endure what may well be a near two-year span of inactivity due to the global pandemic. (Photos by Paul Yates property of Simon Fraser athletics 2021. Photo graphic created by Gabriel Lynn. All Rights Reserved.)
Feature High School Girls Volleyball University Women's Volleyball

Senior Service: Over a season that never was, Simon Fraser’s duo of Tays and Te kept character at the fore for the sake of the future!

BURNABY MOUNTAIN — Bianca Te and Julia Tays never doubted they would finish what they started.Yet the two lone returning seniors with the Simon Fraser women’s volleyball team never figured that the toughest test of their NCAA careers atop Burnaby Mountain would be defined by their response to the day-in, day-out grind of not playing.In […]

Simon Fraser's Farnaaz Johal has emerged as one of the rising young stars on a Clan volleyball team riding a five-game GNAC win streak into a four-game homestead beginning Thursday atop Burnaby Mountain. (Photo by Paul Yates property of Simon Fraser Clan athletics 2019. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Volleyball

Clan ‘creating their own luck’ as preparation, opportunity meet to give SFU volleyball chance to set new program GNAC win streak on ‘Dig Pink’ night

BURNABY — You’ve no doubt heard about the concoction produced from that time-tested recipe, the one where preparation meets opportunity?Simon Fraser head volleyball coach Gina Schmidt isn’t denying the existence of old-fashioned good luck at various points of the five-match win streak her Clan (7-3) carry into the start of a four-game Great Northwest Athletic […]

Fifth-year senior middle blocker Madison Power (11) brings a bushel of intangibles to the Clan volleyball team. (Ron Hole/SFU athletics)
Feature University Women's Volleyball

The Power of Maddy: Clan senior Madison Power a foundational key in success of SFU volleyball

BURNABY MOUNTAIN — Ask Gina Schmidt about her first official day on the job as the then-new head coach of the Simon Fraser Clan volleyball team and you get a story filled with both comedy and karma.“I watched one practice where they weren’t really doing a lot of game play,” Schmidt remembers of a day […]