MONTREAL – Clara Poire of Blainville, Que., scored a game-high 21.5 points as McGill powered past No.6-ranked Sherbrooke 3-1 in a women’s volleyball thriller at Love Competition Hall, Friday. In a back-and-forth match that took one hour and 52 minutes, the set scores were 25-19, 23-25, 25-21 and 25-19.
The result snapped Sherbrooke’s six-game win streak and dropped the Vert & Or to 6-2 atop the topsy-turvy eight-team RSEQ conference. McGill meanwhile, avenged a 3-1 loss at Sherbrooke last month and moved into second place with a 5-3 record, two points in arrears of the Vert & Or.
In a contest that featured 105 digs, Sherbrooke had a slight 53-52 edge, which marked the fifth time in eight games that the Martlets had reached the lofty 50-dig plateau. McGill had a slight upper-hand in both kills (53-47) and stuff blocks (9-8), but Sherbrooke held a 9-8 margin in service aces.
“Sherbrooke came in on a high and is a very aggressive team, so we had to be ready and play aggressively as well and that’s exactly what we did,” said McGill head coach Rachele Beliveau, whose troops are a perfect 5-0 at home this season. “It was a pretty spectacular game, on both sides. The level of fight, the hitting, the power of the game was impressive.”
Poiré racked up a season-high 18 kills, to go along with a pair of aces, three assisted blocks and seven digs. She now ranks fifth among league leaders with 3.29 kills per set.
Co-captains Charlene Robitaille of St. Jean, Que., and Victoria Iannotti of St. Laurent, Que., also reached double-digit scoring with 16 and 14.5 points, respectively.
Robitaille, a six-foot middle-blocker, collected 11 kills with three aces and four assisted blocks. The sixth-year senior added seven digs, a pair of assists and passed for a team-high 2.17 (our of 3).
Iannotti, a 5-foot-9 power-hitter was suiting up for her third game in a row after missing the first five regular season contests with an injury. The fifth-year software engineering senior registered a dozen kills with one ace and 1.5 blocks. She also shone defensively with a team-high 10 digs.
Melanie Dormannof Ottawa, came off the bench to contribute seven kills and five digs. And Montrealer Charlotte Chouinard-Laliberte, a junior setter, filled in nicely for injured starter Audrey Trottier, registering a season-best 42 assists, with a pair of kills, one ace, three blocks and six digs.
“It was a big win for us but we’re already thinking about tomorrow’s game,” Béliveau noted.
McGill (5-3) has little time to enjoy the fruits of its labour, with a quick turnaround, as the Martlets have a bus-trip to Quebec City on Saturday (Nov. 11 at 6 p.m.), where they will take on Laval (4-3), the only other squad to defeat Sherbrooke this season.
The Vert & Or (6-2), meanwhile, have a day to recover before hosting UQTR (2-4) on Sunday at 1 p.m.
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