Trent’s women’s volleyball team ended their remarkable season Saturday afternoon, but returned to Peterborough empty-handed after a tough loss to the Niagara Knights in the bronze medal match of the OCAA Championships.
While Trent put up a good fight, the match was decisive with the Knights taking it in three straight sets 25-12, 25-12, and 25-9.
It’s hard to feel too badly about the loss. The Knights were a tournament favourite, but couldn’t make it to championship play after an upset from the Cambrian Golden Shield.
It wasn’t the only game Trent played over the weekend though. The championships were in a tournament structure, with the top eight teams receiving invites. Trent fought four matches while they were in Toronto, with the tournament being hosted at Redeemer University College.
Excalibur players fought hard all weekend, led by Sarah MacLaren, whose 56 kills across four games were key to their two victories. But let’s not forget Jamie Fryer who ended the regular season ninth overall in terms of kills, and was a crucial member of the team this weekend as well.
The women started things off on Thursday February 26 against the Redeemer Royals, going down after four tough sets (13-25, 18-25, 29-27, 24-26).
Friday they turned it around in another close match, this time against the Sheridan Bruins. It took five sets for Trent to come out on top, and things looked bad after the Bruins took a 2-1 set lead, but McLaren’s incredible 17 kills helped seal the deal. The scores were 25-18, 12-25, 20-25, 25-22, and 15-11.
Saturday was a busy day for the team as they played twice—once against Cambrian, and once against Niagara. While they put away Cambrian 3-1 (25-21, 14-25, 25-19 and 25-18), they just couldn’t eke out a win against the Knights of Niagara.
Trent’s women’s volleyball team are coming off another strong season that saw them win 13 matches and lose only five to finish in a four-way tie for fourth place overall, and second in the East division.
Medal or not, there’s no doubt the women accomplished a lot this year, and have a lot of success to build off of moving forward to next season.
