The University of the Fraser Valley women’s volleyball team got off to a promising start, but the Camosun Chargers came roaring back to earn a four-set victory on Friday evening.
At the Envision Athletic Centre North Gym, the Cascades looked strong in the first set, fending off a late Camosun charge when Rachel Funk hammered a kill between two blockers to seal a 25-23 victory.
Rachel Funk had a strong all-around performance with 14 kills and 14 digs on Friday vs. Camosun.
But it was all Chargers from that point – the visitors from Victoria took the next three sets by scores of 25-22, 25-19 and 25-20.
Camosun (4-3, third place in PACWEST) and UFV (1-5, seventh place) clash again on Saturday afternoon (1 p.m., EAC North Gym).
“Almost every game this year, we’ve been imbalanced,” Cascades head coach Mike Gilray said afterward. “We’ve either had our outside hitters going well and our middles are struggling, or our middles are going well and our outsides are struggling. We’ve got to find a balance.”
On Friday, it was the Cascades’ outside hitters leading the charge. Kim Bauder (16 kills on 58 per cent hitting, 13 digs) and Funk (14 kills, 14 digs) excelled both offensively and defensively.
But beyond those two, Gilray felt his squad made too many errors. At the service line, for instance, the Cascades racked up 10 aces – a very good number in four sets. But they also missed 23 serves, effectively negating their aces in a true boom-or-bust performance.
“In the last set, we stopped making service errors and started making hitting errors,” Gilray noted. “We need to connect and get all parts of the game moving together.”
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