Season Preview: Kodiaks men's volleyball 2024

Heading into his ninth season as head coach of the Lethbridge Polytechnic Kodiaks men’s volleyball team, Greg Gibos has established one of the most competitive programs in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC).

The Kodiaks finished fifth in the ACAC championship tournament last season, but that result was deceiving.

“The year before we went 15-4 and last year it was 14-5,” said Gibos. “Last year we ended up playing eventual national champion NAIT in our first game and they ended up nipping us in five. The result could have probably gone either way but, unfortunately, it wasn’t in our favour.”

Kodiaks only lost four players from last year’s team, one of which was starting right side Paul Dionne. He was a transfer from Mount Royal University, who came to the Kodiaks and then went back to Mount Royal, which was always the plan.

However, a strong recruiting class has helped Gibos fill the void.

“With the success we’ve had we’ve had a lot of student athletes reaching out,” said Gibos. “I would say by far this is the strongest recruiting class and probably the widest breadth. We have athletes from Manitoba now, Saskatchewan, and obviously were also in it for local athletes from southern Alberta. We actually had some late transfers come in from other schools so that definitely bolstered the roster for 2024-25.

Kodiaks boast a solid returning nucleus led by Nolan Moes (fifth year, Natural Resource Compliance, Barrhead, Alta.).

“You can’t talk about our program without talking about Nolan,” said Gibos. “He’s been a conference all-star three years in a row. There’s not a lot of people who are able to be four-time conference athletes, but we suspect Nolan will be in mix for that conversation again.

“We have the reigning ACAC rookie of the year as well with Kohlbe Anderson second year, Business Administration, Claymont, Delaware, USA). For the last two seasons we’ve had the rookie of the year and Kohlbe is back. He’s another big piece of what we’re trying to do here.”

The ACAC continues to be one of the top conferences in the country. With so many tough teams it’s tough to make it out of the province for nationals, but if you do, you have a solid chance at success.

“It’s actually easier to recruit in ACAC,” said Gibos, who has led the Kodiaks to a pair of ACAC silver medals and a fifth-place finish at nationals in his first eight seasons as coach. “One of the nice recruiting tools is saying ‘come and play against some of the best teams in the country.’ A lot of the teams that aren’t in the playoffs would be strong teams in other conferences. It really creates a great atmosphere every night because there’s no pushovers.”

“This year we’ve probably had over 250 emails from potential student athletes,” added Gibos. “It is a huge undertaking, but it’s part of the process. It’s always exciting and I take it as a compliment because early on I definitely wasn’t getting that many emails.”

Even with interest coming from afar, the Kodiaks continue to focus on local talent. A lot of that comes from strong high school programs and continues into club volleyball.

“My biggest thing is I wanted to grow men’s volleyball in southern Alberta when I first started in 2016,” said Gibos. “Now we’re seeing an explosion of men’s volleyball across the board. When I first started we had nine athletes trying out for U18 volleyball here in Lethbridge. Now that number has grown to 52 so now we still have 52 athletes who are playing club volleyball at the 18-year-old level which is super cool to see.

“There’s an appetite for that growth and we want to keep our local athletes local and if they’re university bound we want to help them with the process of finding a university school to go to.”

The main focus for the Kodiaks this season is to grow as a team, ultimately combining that with success in the ACAC.

“Something we’re not running from is we have expectations this season and one of our expectations is we want to be playing for an ACAC championship. We’ve got a couple of fifth-year athletes so whenever you have someone like Nolan stick around for a long time you have such a small window. We’re at one of those critical points where we want to be in the mix when it comes down to those final teams. For us, I’m not saying it’s ACAC championship or bust because it’s not how we do things here, but it’s a healthy goal and not something we’re running from.

As for the Kodiaks’ main competition, Red Deer Polytechnic in the South will be a formidable opponent, but the North will be extremely strong.

“Red Deer is Red Deer, they’re always going to be a strong team, no matter what year it is,” said Gibos. “The North is very good this year. When it comes down to playoffs it’s going to be difficult because Keyano is becoming an old, experienced group.

“NAIT, coming off a national championship, makes it pretty easy for them to recruit, too, and they’re hosting nationals in 2026, so they’ve got another crew coming in. And Lakeland College has a great group this year, too. They have three international athletes and that’s really changed the (ACAC) game. Keyano has five internationals including three Brazilians, a Serbian and an Australian.”