UBC claims their fifth national title in a row.
It was hardly the dominant run of years past, but the UBC Thunderbirds claimed their fifth-consecutive national women’s volleyball title at the expense of the Alberta Pandas on Sunday night.
Battling back from a two set to one deficit in front of a large and energized crowd at McMaster’s Burridge Gym, the Thunderbirds capped their comeback victory with a block on Alberta’s rookie standout Alena Omelchenko.
Final set scores were 25-21, 15-25, 19-25, 25-20, 15-12 in favour of the British Columbian outfit in what was a neck-and-neck encounter between the nation’s top two teams.
The opening frame saw the Pandas open an early lead at 10-6 as UBC began to misfire from the outside, and the Alberta squad would maintain that advantage at the technical timeout after an emotional single block brought the score to 16-13 in their favour.
The Thunderbirds would emerge the stronger from the timeout however, and after Omelchenko botched an attempted attack from the middle, the Pandas’ lead had dwindled to just a single point at 20-19. UBC seized their opportunity and completed the first set comeback with a double block for 25-21.