Gibsons’ Michelle Jakszuk and the University of British Columbia Okanagan (UBCO) Heat proved themselves a team not to be taken lightly in a bronze medal victory at the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) Women’s Volleyball Championship in Brandon, Man., on March 13.
“It feels really good, everyone is intimidated,” Jakszuk said. “We’re just a little team and we worked really hard all year to make it to the podium and that was one of our goals, so we’re all really happy with how it turned out.”
This is only the fifth year that UBCO Heat has competed in CIS, and the general opinion was that it would take at least that long again before they made it to the podium. Head coach Steve Manuel said the medal validated all the work the program has put into being competitive at the CIS level.
“This is just a very satisfying moment,” Manuel said. “There were a lot of naysayers throughout the years … we had lots of negative things said [such as] ‘you’re just going to water things down, you’re not going to be able to compete with the big dogs.’ We thought we could, but we never dreamt we would be able to – in this short amount of time – get to where we are.”
The Heat was ranked first in the CIS this season before losing to the Trinity Western Spartans in the Canada West conference final and came into nationals as the third seeds. The team suffered a disappointing loss to the Toronto Varsity Blues in semi-finals on March 12, which put them in the bronze medal game against the UBC Thunderbirds the next day.
“We played the Thunderbirds a lot this semester so we kind of had them figured out,” Jakszuk said. “I think we went into it confident that we were going to win and we just executed everything that we had to do.
“We just had to be confident in our serving because we’re not the strongest passing team – but we are a good serving team – so we all had to just bomb our serves from the end line,” Jakszuk said.
This is the end of the season for women’s volleyball. Jakszuk said she will be doing some strength training through the off season, and she also hopes to get in some beach volleyball while the weather is nice.
