Looking every bit like the top-ranked CIS team in the country, the UBC Okanagan Heat women’s volleyball team dominated the visiting Regina Cougars in their season opener on Friday.
The Heat, ranked No. 1 in a pre-season coaches’ poll earlier in the week, jumped out to a 14-1 lead in the first set of their best-of-five Canada West Conference match on home court and continued the mastery by sweeping the Prairie cats 25-10, 25-11, 25-16.
With a comfortable lead from the get-go, the Heat were able to display their incomparable depth as 10 members of the team got in on the kills during the three sets. As a team, UBCO fired 10 aces at the shell-shocked Cougars from the service line.
Brianna Beamish, a fifth-year outsider hitter led the Heat with nine kills on 16 attacks, while Megan Festival finished with seven kills and nine digs
Coming off the bench, Siobhan Fitzpatrick, an Immaculata High School graduate, made an impact early with athletic saves booming hits to keep rallies going. She clinched the first set with her lone kill.
The unranked Cougars found some rhythm in the second set and stayed with the Heat at 4-4, but a five-point streak by the home team quickly deflated the visitors.
In the third set, the Heat took a 14-5 lead and never looked back.
The two teams are back at it on Saturday beginning at 5 p.m. at the UBCO gymnasium.
Meanwhile, the Heat men split the first two sets of their season’s first match on Friday, but dropped the third and fourth games in a 3-1 (26-28, 25-18, 23-25, 20-25) defeat at the hands of Regina.
Lars Bornemann of Victoria led the Heat in a losing cause, putting away 16 kills and digging up 10 Cougar replies. Joshua Harvey added 11 kills and two digs, while fourth-years, Jim Bell and Alex Swiatlowski, added six and five kills respectively.
Friday marked the debut of highly-touted rookies, Eli Risso and Devon Cote, both 2015 graduates of Kelowna Secondary School.
Risso, a setter for the KSS Owls, started the Heat’s opening match at libero and looked impressive but nervous at times, while coming up with eight digs in four sets.
Cote, the 2014 B.C. high school player of the year also showed flashes in his first CIS match, recording his first two kills and a block in the fourth set.
Jory Dickie, a teammate of Risso and Cote at KSS two seasons ago, also got into the Heat’s 2015 debut.
The Heat started off their season with an offensive edge that kept them neck and neck with the Cougars for the entire set.
Several times the two teams were tied leaving little room for error on both sides. The Heat, unable to serve the ball effectively, ended the set with a 28-26 loss.
The second set started off strongly for the Heat as fourth-years Harvey, Swiatlowski, and Bell provided UBC Okanagan with an impactful defensive edge that helped fight off the persistent Cougars. The strong defence and effective offence helped push the Heat to a five-point streak and on to a 25-18 win.
The third set was again an evenly played contest, with the score consistently at a one- or two-point differential. However, the Cougars’ ability to play more as a team helped them rise to the final two points by Matthew Lueck and Joshua Nickel to finish the set 25-23.
The fourth set, like the third, was a tenacious back-and-forth affair. The Cougars put together a strong seven-point run, to go up 15-11 and then cruised to a the 25-20 win.
The two teams had similar stats in the match, finishing with 47 kills and 45 assists. The Heat were able to record 50 digs to the Cougars’ 49. Regina led in aces with six compared to the Heat’s four, while both teams struggled from the service line with 19 service errors for UBCO and 14 for Regina.
The Heat and Cougars meet again on Saturday beginning at 7 p.m. at UBCO.
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