Friday’s clash between two nationally ranked women’s volleyball teams lived up to its billing, as the Camosun Chargers edged the UFV Cascades in a five-set thriller.
The Cascades, who came in No. 9 in the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association (CCAA) national rankings, won two of the first three sets, but the No. 7-ranked Chargers rallied to win the last two and claim the victory (25-23, 20-25, 10-25, 28-26, 15-7) at UFV’s Student Activity Centre North Gym.
Camosun (9-2) tightened its grip on second place in the PacWest conference, while the third-place Cascades fell to 7-4 on the season.
UFV has a shot at revenge on Saturday, when they host the Chargers in a rematch at 1 p.m. at the Student Activity Centre.
“The biggest difference was missing serves late in the fourth set,” Cascades head coach Dennis Bokenfohr analyzed. “We didn’t make a serve, and they continued serving tough. We just never recovered from that, and it carried into the fifth set. It took too long to get going again.”
The Cascades were dominant from the service line in the third set – Katie Peacock and Nicole Blandford went on lengthy service runs en route to a lopsided 25-10 score line.
Things unraveled in that department late in the fourth set, though, and that opened the door for the Chargers.
Blandford finished with seven aces, while Peacock racked up a team-high 14 kills. Michelle Zygmunt and Rachel Funk chipped in with 11 and 10 kills, respectively.
“Every time we compete with Camosun, it seems like the games go long, they go to five sets, and they’re a battle right to the end,” Bokenfohr noted. “We’re just trying to see how the ladies compete at critical moments of the game. They know what they want to do. Now they just have to go out and try to succeed in those moments.”
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