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The UBC Okanagan Heat women's volleyball team continued to thrive away from home on Thursday as it recorded a fourth straight 3-0 victory, this time at Thompson Rivers University against the host WolfPack.
Improving to 10-1 in CIS Canada West play, the No. 3-ranked Heat will return to the site of their only loss of the season — a 3-2 decision to the University of Winnipeg Wesmen on Oct. 31 — at the UBCO gymnasium.
The Heat will host the WolfPack on Saturday beginning at 5 p.m.
Coming off two straight shutouts of the Brandon Bobcats on the weekend and a pair of wins (3-0 and 3-1) over the University of Calgary Dinos in Calgary a week earlier, the Heat showed no signs of being travel weary on Thursday at TRU.
They jumped out to a 9-5 lead in the first set and went on to a 25-17 victory, while dominating the next two sets 25-9, 25-10.
“Our team is slowly, but surely developing that killer instinct,” understated Heat head coach Steve Manuel. “ They came out tonight and had the will to dominate. They played unbelievable volleyball tonight. Hats off to the athletes themselves. They played nearly flawless volleyball.”
As a team, the Heat hit at a .557 clip and held the 'Pack to just .042. And overall, the UBCO defence allowed only 10 kills and a negative hitting percentage in the final two sets. Katy Klomps led the commanding performance with seven blocks as UBCO outscored TRU 12-3 in that category.
“I’m surprised at the level the team played tonight, but not surprised that they played well,” said Manuel. “We have a good core of players and our rest plan was spot on when we got back from the road trip. We gave them a day and a half off completely because we felt the rest was more important than prep.
“It shows how hard they worked in the off season and how hard they have worked to this point to be able to come off back-to-back road trips and play as well as they did here tonight. It was just awesome.”
Meanwhile, WolfPack head coach, Chad Grimm, wasn’t so upbeat about his team’s performance that saw the hosts drop to 5-6 on the season.
“As a group we weren’t prepared,” said Grimm. “From top to bottom, we weren’t ready to play. That is what we have to figure out.
“Obviously, serve-reception was a huge turnover for us today. Giving a team like UBCO free ball after free ball and letting them run their offence makes it a long night for our team.”
UBCO was led by Brianna Beamish with 14 kills on 24 chances. The Surrey product (Earl Marriott) finished with five service aces, dive digs, two solo blocks and one block assist. Megan Festival had nine kills on 15 chances, with three service aces and five digs. She added two block assists. Setter Emily Oxland totalled 29 assists, one service ace, three digs and two block assists.
The Heat had 10 service aces to TRU’s four.
“I think collectively, we didn’t have a competitive drive,” said Grimm of his team’s overall performance. “We didn’t recover very well from mistakes. We didn’t put ourselves in position defensively to make up for our serve-reception deficiencies.”
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