Kodiaks capture bronze at ACAC men’s volleyball championship

By Lethbridge Herald on March 2, 2026.

Nathan Reiter

Lethbridge Herald

While a trip to CCAA nationals is not in the cards for the Lethbridge Polytechnic Kodiak men’s volleyball team, it was still a very successful weekend at the ACAC championships in Red Deer over the weekend.

Lethbridge finished with a bronze medal. The Kodiaks defeated the NAIT Ooks in their quarterfinal matchup in five sets before falling in three sets to the eventual ACAC champion Red Deer Polytechnic Kings in the semifinal. Lethbridge would rebound in the bronze medal game to defeat Northwestern Polytechnic in five sets.

“It’s definitely one of mixed feelings.” Kodiak head coach Greg Gibos said about the weekend. “We’re really proud of the efforts that we made. I thought there was a lot of great growth over the course of the weekend for us. Some of our athletes just played some tremendous volleyball when it mattered the most.”

Lethbridge’s weekend could have ended before it really began. The Kodiaks were down two sets to none against NAIT in their quarterfinal matchup. 

“We were running in mud to start that game.” Gibos explained. “We were doing a lot of the game plan, a lot of the things that we wanted to do really well. We were just missing the last step of execution. We felt as though we still had a lot of control in that match. It’s just that we weren’t executing that last point of detail.”

After dropping the first two sets 16-25 and 22-25, the Kodiaks had their backs against the wall. Lethbridge would then rally to take the third set 25-22. The fourth set needed some extra points to decide a winner with the Kodiaks finally winning 28-26. Lethbridge would easily take the fifth and deciding set 15-8.

Gibos says Lethbridge never faltered even going down two sets. 

“We knew if we steadied the ship, we could be really successful against that team at that time. It just came down to a really strong sense of belief. That’s what we talked about in the second and third set changeover, we talked about how much work we put into the year and that we’re confident and everything that we’ve done is kind of led to that moment. We believed everybody that was on the floor at that given time.”

Ben Dyck had 25 kills for the Kodiaks while Cameron Marshall had 16. Malcolm Fisher also added 11 digs.

The Kodiaks couldn’t repeat the same script on Friday as they couldn’t complete a comeback against Red Deer falling in three sets 13-25, 18-25 and 22-25.

The loss on Friday meant that Lethbridge was out of contention for a spot in the CCAA tournament, which is being hosted by NAIT next weekend. Only the host NAIT Ooks and the Red Deer Kings, who won the championship tournament will represent the ACAC.

Despite their goal of reaching nationals out of reach, Gibos says he was proud of the way the Kodiaks played in their final game of the season on Saturday.

“I think all of us would like to go back to Friday night and have a better effort out there against Red Deer on that night. Credit to that young group for really having a short-term memory. That bronze medal is really hard to win. I think we showed a lot of resilience and a lot of growth in that moment. You get your heart ripped out on Friday night and truth be told, we played pretty poorly by our standards on Friday night. It was really nice to see them have a collective reset and a collective desire to win that bronze medal.”