Silver lining for Pandas at volleyball nationals
Heading into Sunday’s U Sports women’s volleyball national championship final, it looked too good to be true for the University of Alberta Pandas.
Coming off a four-set win a day earlier over the reigning champion University of British Columbia Thunderbirds in a rematch of the 2017 championship final, the Pandas watched the No. 4 seed Ryerson University Rams knock off the top-ranked University of Calgary Dinos, who were coming off a Canada West conference championship.
While Calgary (21-3) came into the eight-team tournament at Laval University as heavy favourites, the Ontario University Athletics champion Rams (19-0) hadn’t lost a single game all season.
They kept their perfect season intact with a four-set win (25-22, 29-31, 25-19, 25-21) over the upstart Pandas (15-9), who entered the tournament as the seventh seed before upsetting the No. 2 Montreal University Carabins (18-2).
Kory White led the Pandas with 14 kills and four block assists, while Erin Corbett earned 13 kills, three service aces, the game’s lone solo block and two block assists.
But the Rams proved too much on the way to their first national championship in school history, led by game highs of 20 kills and 24 points from Lauren Veltman, with 11 more kills and a game-high 13 block assists from Theanna Vernon.
At the men’s nationals in Hamilton, the U of A Golden Bears were swept in straight sets by the McMaster University Marauders in Sunday’s bronze-medal game.
Wins of 25-14, 25-16 and 25-22 pushed the host Marauders to their sixth straight podium finish, while the Bears appeared to still be reeling from a four-set loss to the eventual-champion University of British Columbia Thunderbirds in the semifinals a day earlier.
“I don’t know that we ever really got our bearings in that match and we didn’t do a good job of adapting to a team we hadn’t seen before,” Bears associate coach Brock Davidiuk told usports.ca. “That’s what’s it’s about: playing good volleyball in an unfamiliar spot.
“Again, we were put in the corner by an opponent after UBC did that to us last night and we weren’t able to fight our way out of it.”
Second-year right-side Taryq Sani led the bears with 10 kills, while the Marauders’ Brandon Koppers had a game-high 13 kills and a pair of service aces.