Ben Chessor
The Navigator
It may not have been the end of the season that we’re looking for, but the PacWest regular season came to an end for the VIU Mariners’ men’s volleyball team on February 15. The Mariners were on the losing end of the season’s final game, falling 3-0 to their Island rivals, the Camosun Chargers.
The game was an extremely hard-fought one, with Camosun taking a highly contested first set 25-22. In the second set, the Mariners were once again on the short end of a very close set, losing the second set by a score of 25-23. In the third set, the Chargers completed the sweep and picked up the 3-0 victory.
The men also suffered a similar fate on Thursday, February 13 in the first game of the weekend against the Chargers. The Mariners were once again close to victory in the first set, but they eventually fell 25-23. VIU then dropped the game’s remaining two sets 25-16 and 25-18 respectively.
The week prior, the Mariners traveled to the mainland for a weekend series against the Columbia Bible College Bearcats. The Bearcats picked up the 25-16 victory in the first set of the match, but the Mariners battled back and captured the second set 25-22. In the third set, the Bearcats picked up a 25-22 victory of their own before finishing off the Mariners with a 25-16 win in the fourth set to secure the 3-1 victory.
The next day, it was the Bearcats who picked up the clean sweep with a 3-0 victory. The Mariners managed to keep all three sets close, but in the end the first place Bearcats were just too strong for the Mariners to handle.
The Mariners have struggled a bit in the season’s final stretch. The team has lost six games in a row heading into the PacWest provincials, which are scheduled for February 20-22 in North Vancouver. With a record of 10-14, the Mariners finish in the sixth place in the seven team PacWest and will face the third place Douglas College in the first round of the provincials.