Stanford men’s volleyball unofficially starts its season this weekend when it travels to Canada to compete at the Husky Dino Cup. The four-team tournament will be held at the University of Calgary, and besides the Cardinal, features the University of the Pacific, the University of Alberta and host school Calgary.

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Sophomores Garrett Werner (right) and Evan Romero (center) look to lead Stanford past its opponents at the Dino Cup. The exhibition tournament will take place at the University of Calgary. #gallery http://daily.stanford.edu/image/full/8026
Alvin Chow

Sophomores Garrett Werner (right) and Evan Romero (center) look to lead Stanford past its opponents at the Dino Cup. The exhibition tournament will take place at the University of Calgary.

The tournament starts today and concludes on Saturday; each team will play each other once in the round robin format.

Today, the Stanford men will go up against the University of Calgary. Tomorrow brings a match against the University of Alberta while the Cardinal will finish off the weekend with a match against Pacific.

Head coach John Kosty looked forward to the challenge his team expects.

“It gives us an opportunity to evaluate where we’re at right now,” Kosty explained. “It does get some people some playing time. We’re in the mind frame of going up there to win all of the matches. We’re heading to Calgary to reestablish ourselves and our winning tradition.”

Stanford has been traveling to the Dino Cup for over a decade now. In a way, it has become an early-season ritual which the team uses for both match experience and bonding time.

“The other aspect of the tournament we use this for is a bonding experience,” Kosty said. “We’re taking our entire team which is something we normally do not do. It gives us the experience for everyone to travel, to see what its like to be on the road.”

The team will also take several excursions during the down time of their trip, visiting Banff National Forest and exploring the rest of the Canadian wilderness.

“It gives us an opportunity to get outside of the volleyball world and get to know each other a bit better — spend some time off the court in a team environment,” Kosty said.

Although the team’s regular season does not begin until January, Stanford will be back in action in a month when it hosts the Stanford Tournament on Nov. 17. After that, the team will undergo a month-long break before starting the season in the beginning of January.

The Cardinal competes in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, which is easily the best conference in the country and features schools such as UCLA, USC, Pepperdine and UC-Santa Barbara. Nearly all of the 12 teams are ranked in the top 15 of the nation, and an MPSF school has won the national championship in 19 of the last 20 years.

Despite the challenges that Stanford is sure to see in MPSF play, Kosty was optimistic about the upcoming 2008 season.

“With the year of experience we received last year, the game time our freshmen had, I think we’re — right now — better than we were [then],” he said.

“I’m very positive heading into this tournament and heading into the season starting in January.”