By Larry Read

TRU Sports Information Officer

The Thompson Rivers University WolfPack women's volleyball team won a character match as they kicked off a weekend Canada West homestand.

On Friday (Jan 11), the Pack rallied from a 3-1 deficit to beat the visiting Mount Royal University Cougars 3-2 at the Tournament Capital Centre.

The scores were 25-21,18-25,10-25,25-22,15-13.  TRU moves to 7-8 on the year. Mount Royal falls below the .500 mark  also at 7-8.

 SYNOPSIS

The WolfPack came out strong in the first set and rolled to a four point victory led by five kills by Kendra Finch (4^th year, outside hitter, North Vancouver, BC).  Carly Davies (3^rd year, right side, Terrace, BC) was the top offensive threat for Mount Royal with three kills in 14 atempts.

Mount Royal rebounded in the second and third sets. The second set saw them roll to a 25-18 win. Davies had five kills in 11 swings in the set to move to eight on the night.  TRRU's Olga Savenchuk (1^st year, outside hitter, Donetsk, Ukraine) led for TRU with four kills in the set giving her seven on the night. She wound up with a match high 16.

The third set was dominated by the Mount Royal middles as they won handily.

In the fourth set, the teams battled throughout. TRU was first to the technical time out after jumping out to a 8-1 lead. A key block by Hayley McNaught gave the Pack a 24-22 lead which led to Thompson Rivers getting the winnng point courtesy of Finch.

In the fifth set,  Thompson Rivers scored the first three points and were up 5-2 before the Cougars made a comeback and took the lead at 7-6 on a service ace from Haley Roe (5^th year, outside hitter, Airdrie, AB).  TRU made it to eight first courtesy of a kill from Savenchuk.

Cassidy Kitchen (3^rd year, outside hitter, Terrace, BC) led Mount Royal with 13 kills.

VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS: 

click here

KEY STATS:

TRU                   25   18    10   25   15   ---3

MOUNT ROYAL   21    25    25   22   12   ---2

T

RECORDS:

TRU: 7-8    MOUNT ROYAL: 7-8

THEY SAID IT (post match quotes):

TRU head coach Chad Grimm:

"It wssn't pretty. At a lot of points I don't think either team played super well. They played well when they beat us 25-10. They were winning the serve and receive battle. I thought we stabilized the session. We didn't serve great all night and I don't think we ever playing stable. At the end of the day we found a way to grind it out. It is nice to get a result win when you don't have your best performance."

COACHES POST GAME VIDEO INTERVIEW:   click here

Mount Royal Coach Sandra Lamb  (21 st season):

On match:

"I thought we should have had a better outcome than we did. But they (TRU) hung in there and battled and their big player (Savenchuk) decided to show up when they needed her. She won the game for them at the end.  Our serve receive wasn't very good so we flipped our line up a little bit and tried to get some different looks at them. The problem with our team is that we don't back to the things that are working. We try and change the world and in the end it didn't work for us."

COACHES POST GAME VIDEO INTERVIEW:  click here

UP NEXT:

The teams will battle it out again tomorrow (Sat Jan 12) at the Tournament Capital Centre beginning at 5 pm.

Tomorrow's match will be webcast on www.Canadawesttv beginning with the pregame show at 4:50 pm with

OF NOTE:   The "TRU Bookstore/McDonalds Leader of the Pack Player of the Match" was Finch.