MONTREAL – Five different players reached double-digit scoring as the McGill women’s volleyball team fought off a major case of the sniffles to upset third-place Laval 3-2 in a Sunday matinee at Love Competition Hall. The set scores were 25-19, 22-25, 25-21, 16-25 and 15-9 in a back-and-forth match that took two hours and 10 minutes to play.
The result avenged a pair of first semester losses to Laval: 3-2 at home on Nov. 10 and 3-0 in Quebec City on Nov. 22.
“This was a tough game to win but mostly because our whole team was sick,” revealed Martlets head coach Rachele Beliveau, whose troops were apparently ravaged by a flu bug that affected six of the dozen players who dressed. “We pushed as much as we could and honestly I’m very proud of our group because half of them couldn’t breathe very well on the court. We were (quieter than Laval) during the game because we had to preserve our energy. But when we had a chance, we pushed. Today I was wondering if I would have enough players to start the game. We showed a lot of character this weekend against two tough teams.”
The Martlets had to rally a number of times to pull this one off. Trailing 13-8 in the opening set, McGill went on a 17-6 run to prevail. Then in the third set, McGill overcame a 14-8 deficit with a 17-7 run to inch closer to victory. That set featured a minute-long rally that resulted in 43 touches, with the ball crossing over the net 15 times. Laval won that one to go ahead 18-16 but the gritty Martlets fought back to win the round.
“That really speaks to the mental toughness of the team,” Beliveau said. “Honestly I was very impressed with how we were able to deal with all that, while staying calm and focused. Despite being drained of energy, we kept pushing.
“This team has matured and progressed over the past few months and they buy in now, know a little bit more about what we are trying to do and how our system works. At the beginning of the season, we had many new faces and a lot of questions and new things that we were trying to implement. They are playing with confidence now.”
Contributing to that was new setter Selima Guidara, a sophomore who racked up 45 assists in the win over Laval, helping four teammates reach double-digits in kills. Guidara became a starter by osmosis after senior Charlotte Chouinard-Laliberte went down with a leg injury for much of the fall semester. The latter recently returned to the lineup but was moved up front to the position of right-side hitter.
“We talked with Charlotte at the beginning of the season about the possibility of changing her position (from setter to the front row) because she’s a good hitter and had played that in the past,” said Beliveau. “But then she was injured and after finally returning to the linup, she wasn’t 100 per cent, had some good days and bad days. So it was hard to plan the transition (from setter to right-side hitter).
“Charlotte is an experienced player and hitting wasn’t as hard on the body as setting. So we spoke about (switching position) and just decided to try the move. She is playing relaxed and then with her on the front row and Salina in at setter, we have more power, maturity and consistency in our lineup. It worked well at Sherbrooke on Friday. But today, Charlotte was very sick, so it was (a question mark). She couldn’t breathe that well but fought through it.”
The two teams combined for 105 kills, 101 assists and a whopping 141 digs, in addition to 21 stuff blocks and 23 service aces. McGill registered 50+ in three key categories: kills (55), assists (52) and digs (70)
Leading the way for Laval was Justine Raymond (23), Alexandryne Le (14.5) and Roxane St-Amand (14).
It was the third win in the last four league outings for McGill, which now sits fourth in the eight-team RSEQ conference with a 6-7 record, after a disappointing 1-5 start to the season. Third-place Laval dropped to 7-5 and sit tied with UQAM (7-6), only two points ahead of the Martlets.
With eight confrontations remaining before playoffs, McGill will now have a good chance to extend their current two-game win streak with the next six games scheduled against lower-place opponents. They have two meetings apiece slated against ETS (0-11), UQAC (3-10) and UQTR (3-9), before closing out the schedule with single games against UQAM (7-6) and Montreal (12-1).
The Martlets return to the court on Sunday (Jan. 19) in a 1 p.m. tip-off against ETS on Jan. 19 at 1 p.m.
“Collectively, we pushed very hard today and it was good to see when a team puts in that kind of effort and keeps pushing each other to get one more point, and then another,” Beliveau added. “I hope we can keep up the momentum. We are giving them a couple days off to recover their health and hopefully we have built up some good confidence from these past two wins.”
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