EDMONTON — Last year, the University of Alberta Pandas had to watch the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds celebrate a national championship on their home floor, and there was no way Alberta was going to let them have any reason to celebrate once again.

Kory White led Alberta with 18 kills, while Julia Zonneveld had 15 kills and 14 digs in a four-set victory (25-22, 25-21,17-25, 25-20), Friday night at the Saville Community Sports Centre.

Gabrielle Attieh led UBC with 16 kills and nine digs, while Jayde Robertsen and Brynn Pasin chipped in with 10 kills each in the T-Birds loss.

Alberta improves to 6-5, while UBC drops to 6-5 in the Canada West standings.

“It was a bit frustrating to not take advantage of our opportunities especially in the first couple of sets,” said UBC head coach Doug Reimer. “We didn’t get off to a great start and had some plays under our control that we didn’t take advantage of to put them under more pressure. There were portions of the match that we executed very well and I was also pleased with our ability to battle especially in the last half of the match.”

Alberta led from start to finish in the opening set and UBC pushed back in the second set, but Alberta was able to take advantage of 16 service errors in the match, playing a part in earning the second-set win.

“With their serve game, they’re only one serving run away from a tie game,” said Pandas head coach Laurie Eisler. “We never felt a lead was safe until the end. I was really happy with the team not losing composure. They’re always going to be that team on the calendar that creates an extra level of excitement to play. This was their first game back since winning the national championship and we knew they’d be excited to play here and we knew we’d have to play a real tough game. It’s a great rivalry, and the athletes don’t know the half of it. Doug is such an outstanding coach and they have tons of talent across the lineup and they’re always hard to play.”

But the defending U SPORTS national champions weren’t going to lay down easy and in the third set started to really give the Pandas all kinds of trouble.

Alberta went on a mini 5-1 run late in the third set to give them a little confidence.

Alberta and UBC battled back and forth, but the Pandas were able to grab momentum from veteran middle Erin Corbett from the service line.

She rattled off five straight points to break the game open. Corbett had two of her four aces in the fourth set. UBC led Alberta 10-8 in service aces, but the Pandas only committed nine service errors, which played a big part in the win.

Zonneveld is always among the Pandas leaders in digs every weekend, but her 15 kills gave Alberta a big 1-2 punch of offence with White to go head-to-head against the powerful T-Birds offence.

Alberta and UBC will wrap up their two-game weekend series on Saturday at 4:00 p.m. PT

[SOURCE: UBC]