EDMONTON – They certainly didn't do it the easy way, but the University of Calgary Dinos qualified for their ninth straight CIS Women's Volleyball Championship Saturday with a clutch 3-2 win over the host Alberta Pandas in the bronze medal match at the Canada West Final Four (20-25, 25-19, 25-18, 17-25, 15-12).
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The result means that the Alberta Pandas are eliminated from contention and will miss the national tournament. Calgary joins UBC and Trinity Western as the Canada West representatives in Fredericton, N.B., with the championship set to kick off Thursday, Feb. 26 with four quarterfinals.
The matchup was a typical Battle of Alberta with high intensity and courageous digs, indicative of two stellar teams who both had 16-4 regular season records. It comes as no surprise that, in head-to-head playoff games since the 2002-03 varsity season, the Alberta-based squads are deadlocked at 6-6.
"It was a team effort and everybody really played well today," said Calgary head coach Jesse Knight. “Our defence was stellar, especially on second contact, and we just wouldn't let the ball hit the floor. I'm really proud of how the girls performed.”
It was a bounce-back victory of sorts for the Dinos, who fell 3-0 in their semi-final match Thursday night to the defending champion UBC Thunderbirds in a deflating loss.
“We decided to deal with us and not worry too much about what was going on with the other side of the net,” said Knight. “We were able to get back into our rhythm, we executed, and we did what we wanted to do.”
The parity showed up at the start of the first set, with neither team getting far ahead of the opposition until a number of Calgary attack errors, combined with a couple of kills from first-year Panda Kelci French (2008-09 Canada West Rookie of the Year), pushed Alberta to a 9-2 run from which the Dinos never recovered.
The Pandas carried the momentum into the second set, getting a pair of three-point leads in the early going, but a hungry Calgary offense equalized the score each time with kills from fifth-years Holly Harper, the Canada West Player of the Year, and Lauren Perry as well as fourth-year Laura Spence leading the way. A 36.4 per cent attack efficiency, and a late 5-0 run, vaulted the Dinos past the Pandas to tie the set score at one.
With momentum now in Calgary's favour and a game-high attack percentage of .412, the third set was considerably one-sided until a late Alberta surge closed the gap to six points before Harper banked her sixth kill of the set and 15th on the afternoon.
A focused Pandas squad came out in the fourth set to deter her numbers, however, forcing a number of attack errors for her (four in total) and for the rest of her team (six). Harper and fellow veteran Perry returned to form in the final set, finishing with 19 and 17 kills, respectively, in their bronze medal win.
Veteran Panda Jocelyn Blair led all players with 21 kills to go with her eight digs while teammates Tiffany Proudfoot and Allison Ritter led the team with 12 apiece.
For Blair, middle Samantha Wojtkiw, libero Stacey Robertson as well as setter and captain Daryll Roper, it was their last CIS competition as all four players are fifth year student athletes. Wojtkiw finished with four kills, one ace and five blocks while Roper went out with 46 assists, two kills and eight digs. Harper, Perry, and Julie Young, the Dinos' three fifth-year athletes, were able to extend their careers by one more week.
“There were three seniors on either side who could have had their careers end today, and all six of them played very well,” said Knight. “I think in the end ours played a little better and that was the difference. Ray (Lavertu) had a great game for us; she really did a number digging up Jocelyn.”
Lavertu, the Calgary libero, had 14 digs on the night, just three shy of Perry's team-leading 17.
Seedings and schedule for the CIS Women's Volleyball Championship at UNB in will be announced Sunday afternoon. Quarterfinals go Thursday with semi-finals Friday and the championship match Saturday, all at the Aitken Centre in Fredericton. Joining the three Canada West representatives will be the host Varsity Reds along with the Moncton Aigles Bleus, the top-ranked Montreal Carabins and their provincial counterparts, the Laval Rouge et Or, and the Ontario provincial champion. York hosts McMaster in Toronto Saturday night with the final berth to the championship on the line.
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