In Wednesday’s Vancouver Sun: UBC Okanagan picks up volleyball torch
By Cary Mellon on January 23, 2015
UBC ranked No. 1 in CIS women’s volleyball. Ho-hum. Big deal, right?
The long-limbed, six-foot-plus girls on the Point Grey campus did win six consecutive national titles before that streak was snapped in the 2014 final by Manitoba.
But hold on a minute. This week’s new No. 1 needs an asterisk, in part because of a hyphen. Say hello to the UBC-Okanagan Heat, one of the smallest schools in the powerhouse Canada West, and one that has climbed to the top of the rankings for the first time since the Kelowna-based school joined CIS in 2011.
“This is a very hungry and driven group . . . (and) has a bit of a chip on their shoulders,” head coach Steve Manuel said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “And they still have something to prove.
“There were a lot of naysayers that were simply saying that we wouldn’t be able to compete with the big dogs and in Canada West for a long, long time.
“This ranking is great, but you’re not calling if we’re No 3. It’s a great benefit for the program and a nice thing to happen. It gets people taking about us, but it doesn’t change the end goal, which is to continue on and have a successful season and do all we can advance to nationals.”
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