The timing was everything for the Moscrop Panthers girls’ volleyball team.
The first-year senior West Burnaby school team defeated North Shore champion West Vancouver in a marathon five-set victory at Moscrop to qualify for its first-ever B.C. quad A provincial girls’ volleyball championships.
Moscrop came from behind twice in the two hour and 15-minute match to force a tiebreak before pulling out a 15-11 win in the fifth set over a much taller West Van side in the semifinals of the Lower Mainland girls’ championship on Friday.
The win gave the Panthers one of three Mainland berths into the provincials. A fourth and fifth berth will be decided on wild cards later in the North Shore this week.
“We wanted to play our best and put it out on the floor. It’s a great feeling,” said Moscrop captain Lauren Hum. “(North Shore) is always great competition and we want to play the best, it’s exciting.”
Moscrop dropped a close, opening first set 28-26, but came back to win the second set 25-20 on the back of a seven-point service run by Elianna Guo midway in the match.
The two teams traded the next two games, with the Panthers forcing a fifth and final set with a 25-15 win in the fourth.
In the tiebreak, West Van went on a late rally to lead 8-7 at the changeover, but Ernestine Tiamzon got Moscrop back on track with a timely kill.
Aided by a service ace by Natalie Yu and a back-court kill by junior Isabella Cheung, Moscrop took a 13-9 lead. Tiamzon finished off the comeback with a kill and a final service winner to win 3-2 and advance to the Mainland final against Argyle.
“We’re shorter, so we have to make up for it with other parts of our game like digging and not letting the ball hit the ground,” said Hum. “In the end, it’s just a game, but it was really exciting, like we could win this, this could really happen.”
But in the final, Moscrop lost Tiamzon after an opening 29-27 loss in the opening set, and never looked a threat after that, losing to Argyle in straight sets.
Without the presence of their power hitter on the court, the confidence and purpose in the Panthers’ play appeared to vanish, despite the best efforts of Cheung to pick up the slack. Moscrop dropped the final two sets 25-12, 25-16 to finish as the No. 2 Mainland seed to the provincials.
In wild-card qualifying, Burnaby North finished in fifth place, downing Magee 25-15, 25-22, 22-25, 25-20.
North lost its setter Yasmeen Parhar early in the match but still managed to gut out a 3-1 win over the Vancouver school largely on a strong fourth-set contribution from Kaitlyn Tsang and Vivian Li.
The quad A provincials will be held in Penticton Nov. 28 to 30.
