The atmosphere was electric last year at the Field House during the ACAC Championships.

Wednesday was a big day for Briercrest College and their Men's Volleyball program as they were announced by the Alberta College Athletic Association as the hosts for the 2014 CCAA Men's Volleyball National Championships.

The Caronport-based college and seminary made a bid this week in Edmonton to host the event and the results were announced on Wednesday.

“We had strong support basically off of both the strength in our program and also last year's successful ACAC Championships,” said Nigel Mullan, Clippers athletic director and men's volleyball coach, after the announcement.

“We definitely used the ACAC Championships as a trial basis.  The school took a shot on us to see if we could host an event like that outside of our institution and still get support and they thought it was a great success.

“We thought of this as more of an institutional bid, rather than just an athletic department bid, and it was really shown in our presentation just with the depth our institution had to put on a bid like we did.  We definitely raised the bar there.”

The event will shine the national spotlight on Moose Jaw with the event being held at the Field House in March of 2014.  That's the same venue that was used for the ACAC Men's Volleyball Championships hosted last year by Briercrest.

“It was such a great environment to host it there,” said Mullan.  “There's some many amenities that Moose Jaw has to put on that and we would be looking forward to not only duplicating, but trying to take it a little bit further as far as the performance that we can put on.  With a year and a half, there's lots that we can dream up now and it's just making sure that we're putting things in place to make that come true.”

An organizing committee is already in place and the planning will begin immediately for the event, which is now 14 months away.  “There's going to be quite a bid of work, but it's nice that we have a template from last year, so we'll look at that pretty closely and we'll just make sure we have the right people doing the right things and look at how we can improve on our performance from last year,” explained Mullan.

The pressure is now also on the Clippers men's volleyball program to put together a national caliber team.  Mullan says their goal every year is to compete for a national title and they will have no problem with that task, “The strength of our program was what we were focused on and what allowed us to have a strong voice at the table, so we just need to continue to have that competitive advantage on the court and I think we have the group in place to carry that forward to next year.”

The Clippers best finish at nationals came in 2011 when they picked up a bronze medal and this year's team is sitting with a 9-1 record so far in ACAC play.  Mullan feels they will be able to bring back key pieces from this year and improve for next year.

“With the group that we have and there's definitely excitement about the potential chance now of returning most of our guys for next year and adding some key additions to help us with that opportunity.”

The National Championship is an eight team tournament with six teams representing college leagues from BC, Quebec, Ontario and the Maritimes as well as the ACAC champion and the host team.  “Our goal is to enter this tournament as the ACAC champions,” added Mullan.

The countdown is on as the preparations begin for the CCAA National Championships to come to Moose Jaw in March, 2014.