The tournament host and fourth-seeded Trinity Western University Spartans captured the second U Sports men’s volleyball title in school history--TWU's overall fifth U Sports championship win--with a straight-set gold medal win (25-12, 25-22, 27-25) over the No. 3 Brandon Bobcats, Sunday evening, at the Langley Events Centre.
Watch the spine-tingling match highlights in this video, or check out more photos of the winning plays.
Hometown fans—the so-called Spartan Faithful—showed massive spirit throughout the tournament. The frenzy of the fans helped carry their heroes to a straight-sets sweep. TWU head coach, Ben Josephson said, "The crowd sustains us. You just have to worry about playing volleyball because the wall of sound is like an energy that fires you up.”
The Spartan women also had a victorious weekend. They took bronze at the U Sports volleyball championships after a four-set win (25-14, 25-19, 18-25 and 25-20) over their Canada West rivals University of Alberta Pandas, on Sunday afternoon in Laval, Quebec.
To cap that off, TWU women's Head Coach, Ryan Hofer, was recently named CIS Coach of the Year—the first TWU women’s volleyball coach to receive the honour.