MONTREAL – Victoria Iannotti scored a career-high 29 points and reached the 500-kill career plateau as the McGill women’s volleyball team came from behind and continued its unblemished campaign at Love Competition Hall, with a thrilling 3-2 win over UQAM, Friday. The Martlets won the opening set 25-16 but dropped the next two 25-18 and 25-23 before pulling a rabbit out their collective hats. They rallied hard to win the last two sets 25-17 and 15-12.
With a 9-4 record overall, the McGill women are 6-0 at home and 3-4 on the road, including the preseason. It was the third straight win for the Martlets, who improved to 7-3 in league play and moved into a tie with Sherbrooke (7-2) atop the RSEQ standings. The Citadins dropped to 5-3 and now sit in a three-way tie for third place with Montreal (5-3) and Laval (5-4).
For the fourth consecutive contest, McGill and its opponent combined to collect more than 100 kills and 100 digs, mind-boggling numbers by any measure.
“It was pretty intense,” said Rachèle Béliveau, in her 33rd year as head coach of the Martlets, who are averaging 46.8 kills per game. “The stats are crazy high this season. In the past, I don’t remember us ever averaging more than 30 kills in a game but we are getting about 50 almost every game this season. We are reaching a new level of play in the Quebec league.
“Once again, we showed our ability to fight. We didn’t panic when we lost the second and third sets. Our team understands now that we can produce a lot of kills in any given game.”
Iannotti, a 5-foot-9 power-hitter from St. Laurent, Que., scored her points with a career-high 24 kills, a pair of service aces, two stuff blocks and two assisted blocks. The fifth-year software engineering senior added 10 digs and an assist. With 524 career kills in regular season play, she joins five other McGillians in the 500 club, an exclusive group that includes Wendy Whelan (1995-1998), Jennifer Thomson (2005-2010), Claire Vercheval (2016-2020), Kelsey Irwin (2007-2011) and current teammate Charlene Robitaille (2018-2024).
Iannotti was one of three Martlets in double-digit scoring, alongside Clara Poire (16) of Blainville, Que., and Montrealer Rachel Leduc (10.5).
Poire tallied a dozen kills with three aces and a pair of assisted blocks. She added a team-high 14 digs and four assists.
Third-year setter Charlotte Chouinard-Laliberte, also from Montreal, registered 33 assists in her third consecutive straight start in place of senior Audrey Trottier, who saw limited duty after returning from an upper-body injury.
Masha Solaja, a third-year player from Toronto who comes in off the bench, led the team in passing with a 2.33 serve-receive (out of 3).
Four members of the Citadins also reached double-figure scoring, led by Sabrina Mayer (19 pts), Juliette Gosselin (16.5), Erlande Dacilia (11.5) and Laura Cote-Collin (10). UQAM setter Noemie Gagne racked up 48 assists.
McGill had the upper hand in kills (60-56), aces (8-3) and assists (55-54), while UQAM had the edge in blocks (11-7) and digs (61-57).
“We worked a lot on our serving in practice, so I was happy to see that it paid off with eight aces,” noted Beliveau, whose troops finished one ace shy of a season-high.”We don’t want to miss serves just to get aces. Ideally, we want to be around (a 1-to-1 ratio or better) on aces to serving errors and we missed on 10 serves tonight, so that was pretty good.”
UQAM (5-3) will host Sherbrooke (7-2) on Nov. 19, while McGill (7-3) plays Laval (5-4) in Quebec City on Nov. 24 in a 6 p.m. tip-off.