Not the start to the weekend the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack women's volleyball team would have wanted.

In a battle for second place in the Canada West, the WolfPack went into Calgary and were swept by the Mount Royal Cougars in 3 straight sets. The scores on Friday (Jan 17) at the Kenyan Centre were 25-16,25-23,25-21.

The WolfPack had trouble in the first set containing veteran Mount Royal middle Tasha Holness (4^th year, Calgary, AB).  Holness had four kills in the first set and made some key blocks at the net as the Cougars won by nine. 
 
Fellow middle Dhoili Thokbaum (2^nd year, Calgary, AB) had four kills and a .667 hitting percentage for Mount Royal in that opening set.  TRU got three kills a piece from both Olga Savenchuk (2^nd year, outside hitter, Donetsk, Ukraine) and Gabriela Podloski (4^th year, outside hitter, Grande Prairie, AB).

The second set saw TRU play improved volleyball and went on a run to start the set but still fall short 25-23.Thokbaum had another four kills for Mount Royal while Savenchuk added three to her total for six on the night.

The third set opened with the WolfPack scoring the first five points but still fell short.

Mount Royal was led by Haley Roe (3^rd year, outside hitter, Airdrie, AB)  who bested the WolfPack outside hitters on a lot of one-on-one battles.  She wound up with a team high 14 kills on 21 chances. Thokbaum had 11 kills in 22 swings. Holness with seven kills in 20 opportunities.   Quinn Pelland (3^rd year, setter, Wanham, AB) had 34 assists and 15 digs while Cassidy Kitchen (4^th  year, outside hitter, Terrace, BC) added 5 kills in 23 chances with 11 digs.

For TRU:  Svenchuk had 10 kills in 21 opportunities and seven digs.  Kendra Finch (5^th year, outside hitter, North Vancouver, BC) added six kills in 27 chances and seven digs.  Kysenia Kocyigit (1^st year, middle, Belroza, Belarus) had five kills in 12 swings.

Abby Spratt (4^th year, setter, Calgary, AB) had 13 assists while  Anastasiia Muzyka (3^rd year, setter, Poltawa, Ukraine) added 10 assists.  Katie Ludvig (3^rd year, libero, Kamloops, BC) had 7 digs.

WolfPack head coach Chad Grimm said afterwards, "Just couldn't get some stops. I didn't think our block defense was good enough. We allowed their outside hitters to use our block way too much. I thought out of system our second contact wasn't clean enough to give our outside attackers a good enough shot against a good blocking team. We put balls over that they could make too much out of by keeping themselves in system and giving their hitters better looks . We need to clean that up tomorrow if we want a better result."

The victory moves Mount Royal to 13-2 on the season while Thompson Rivers falls to 12-3.  The teams will close out their weekend series on Saturday (January 18).  Match time is 5 pm MDT.  You can catch it on a pay per view basis on Canada West TV presented by Co op.

After the match,  The WolfPack return home to entertain the University of British Columbia Okanagan Heat on Friday Jan 24^th and Saturday Jan 25^th.   Match time next Friday will be 6:45 pm at the Tournament Capital Centre.
 
All of the above games can been seen on a pay per view basis on Canada West TV  presented by Co-op by accessing: https://cw.yaretv.com/.   Results will be available on the WolfPack social media platforms and their website  www.goWolfPack.ca.