York recovers in tie-breaker

Lewis Chaitov
Staff Writer
Yes, you can say a win is a win. And though the York Lions women’s volleyball team scored a “win” and overcame the Varsity Blues 15-5 in a tie-breaking set Jan. 16, it was not really a victory.
The afternoon match showed fans a team struggling to maintain their position in the standings, a team playing at a much lower level than expected of them.
The match started slow for the Lions at the Tait McKenzie Centre as the Toronto Varsity Blues took the first set easily, and went on to take the second set right after. The Lions were unable to keep the ball controlled and the setting consistent, and could not ground the ball on the opposite side. At one point, the Blues were able to capitalize on York’s weakness and score eight points in a row with nothing in their way to stop them.
Just like the match on Jan. 9 – when the team also failed to come out strong against the Windsor Lancers – the Lions let the match go to five sets, to a place where the team could not afford any more mistakes.
“We’re slumping a little bit because we had a long break but also had a few injuries,” said team captain Sarah Sutton, who returns to the starting line after an injury that put her out for the first few games. Sutton, along with veteran player Thinesa Sriskandarajah, played with a lot of determination in the match and helped revive the team in the last two sets.
Assistant coach Ben Tran believes the team is just overcoming an obstacle at the moment and though it’s going slow there has been improvement. “It has been slow and we are trying to get the system back into place. Our captain is back, but she has been restricted to back court as this point in time. We are try- ing a few new lines to see if we can get things happening, but things are coming along slowly. Today was a slow start but things were falling into place near the end of the match,” said Tran.
Other top scorers of the night were Brandie Wilkerson, who put 19 points on the score board, and Kristina Vlcek with fourteen-and-a-half points.