CIS women's volleyball nationals: Cougars' late-set heroics help fuel victory over Varsity Blues in fifth-place game

Pete Yee

“I never thought I'd be so excited coming in fifth.”

Poignant words coming from Regina Cougars head coach Melanie Sanford as her team came away with a hard-fought straight-sets victory (25–22, 25–23, 25–17) against the Toronto Varsity Blues during Sunday afternoon's fifth-place match at the CIS women's volleyball championship.

Through the first two sets, Regina found themselves pulling out late-set heroics. Toronto was able to hold leads up into the 15- to 20-point range, but found themselves scrambling late as the Cougars brought forth clutch onslaughts to close out the two sets, won by three and two points, respectively. Sanford credits her team's ability to hang tough late against the V-Blues as a key factor in the victory.

“[Resilience is] really a part of our game and a part of our team character that's got us here,” Sanford explained. “We knew that some of the things that Toronto did were going to take us a little bit of time getting used to — the timing and the rhythm — and that we needed to be really patient with that. [We needed to] not let ourselves get frustrated when it wasn't coming right away, right away.”

Today's match spelled the end of CIS careers for two of the Cougars fifth-year starters, Beth Clark and Meagan Smith, with this weekend being their first time at nationals. Though advancing to the consolation round wasn't exactly the path that the team had envisioned, Clark was still content with their showing at the tournament, but disappointed that she won't get this opportunity again with a strong Cougars team going forward.

“I'm sort of numb right now. I'm not going to shed a tear quite yet, but it hasn't quite hit me. I think when it is going to hit me is next year when they start gearing up for the preseason and I'll be on the sidelines not doing much of anything,” Clark said.

“But this was a huge opportunity for us, first of all, to make it to the final four for Canada West — I think our league is the toughest league in Canada, and to make it top-three was exciting for everyone on our team, our program, and our city.”