EDMONTON - The Trinity Western Spartans continued their penchant for starting slow, losing the first set of the Canada West Final Four semifinal matchup to the Calgary Dinos, but the third seed recovered
to upset the second-seeded Dinos 3-2 (22-25, 29-27, 25-20, 17-25, 15-9) Saturday afternoon at the University of Alberta Pavilion.

BOX SCORE

Calgary seemed to have all the momentum heading into the fifth set after a taking the fourth 25–17 while forcing the Spartans into nine attack errors and a .032 attack percentage in the set, but they couldn't sustain that pressure into the fifth set.

“We played good at times and put some pressure on them, but they passed, probably in the end, better than us, and … at the end of the day, they were better than us on the whole,” admitted Calgary head
coach Rod Durrant.

“We just got down a little bit; a couple of communication errors, a couple of bad passes, and they were able to capitalize on that.”

The Spartans turnaround coincided with that of their serving game. Through the first two sets, the Spartans made ten service errors and no aces, but they stuck with their tough-serving game plan and it paid off as they racked up six aces in the next three sets while making only ten more errors in them.

Leftside hitter Steven Marshall led the way for TWU, racking up team highs in aces (3) and kills (21), while Marc Howatson added 17 kills and Joshua Doornenbal added ten on a .444 attack percentage.

Durrant was happy with his team's performance at times, but his team couldn't maintain consistency over the course of all five sets.

“We're happy with parts of our game, but in order to be successful, we have to maintain that for five sets,” he said.

Calgary was led offensively by 14 kills from Graham Vigrass and 11 kills, four aces and five blocks from Oleg Podporin.

The Dinos will face Thompson Rivers in the Canada West bronze medal match at noon Sunday afternoon, while Trinity Western will face Alberta for the conference title two hours later. All four teams have already qualified for the CIS championship next week at Kamloops.

-UC-