The Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Bold women’s volleyball squad rallied off three consecutive set victories on Saturday to come out on top of the University of Toronto (UofT) Varsity Blues and advance to the OUA semi-finals with a 3-1 (19-25, 25-21, 25-17, 25-21) win.
Mikayla Sherriffs, Julie Gordon and Lauren Veltman helped guide the Bold to their first playoff victory in nearly five years, combining for 42 of the team’s 59 kills on the night and limiting UofT’s dynamic duo of Julia Murmann and Olivia Zhu to just 32 kills on 106 attempts.
“We knew coming in that they were a team that relies on two players a lot offensively. I thought we did a great job in making it harder on them as the match went on,” said head coach of the Bold Dustin Reid following the game.
The Bold outhit the Varsity Blues in all but one of their sets on Saturday, limiting their scrappy cross city rivals to just a .173 hitting percentage on 162 attempts.
“We out-scrapped UofT,” said Sarah Zonneveld following the win. “We knew we were gonna come back and win. It wasn’t a big thing,” added Sherriffs.
Struggling to find their footing in the opening set of Saturday’s postseason matchup, TMU finally found their stride midway through the second set while trailing the Varsity Blues 8-4.
A pair of kills from Sherriffs and a 4-0 run elevated the Bold into a second-set deadlock and shifted all the match’s momentum well into their favour. The fourth-year hitter finished the set with a team-high six kills to help secure the Bold’s first victory of the night and even the score up at one apiece.
“Those are things you wanna see your team go through and feel confident about so next time you’re in that spot you can have that belief,” said Reid.
Lauren Veltman entered the third set struggling to find any sort of groove in her offense, tallying just a trio of kills and a 0.56 hitting percentage up to that point.
The senior – one of the few players to have appeared in TMU’s last playoff victory – flipped the script entirely in her game throughout the third, grabbing six kills and a pivotal block while leading 23-16 to push the Varsity Blues to the brink of elimination.
The Bold ultimately got the job done in the fourth set with the help of a closing 5-2 run to secure a date with the OUA-best Brock Badgers next week.
“It’s one match. If we play with the type of resilience and teamwork that we did today, we can give anyone a run for their money,” mentioned Reid.
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