By Brandon Buechler
Last weekend the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees women’s volleyball team embarrassed the Ryerson Rams at the Mattamy Athletic Centre with a straight sets win. On Saturday, the Rams will go for revenge when they travel to Ottawa for a first round playoff game against the Gee-Gees.
“Our first goal was to get to the playoffs,” said head coach Dustin Reid. “Now we’re there and we play Ottawa on Saturday. We’ve put ourselves in a position to win the conference.”
As they prepare for their match-up against the University of Ottawa, who are ranked sixth nationally, Reid took some time to think back on the women’s strong regular season performance.
“It’s been a good season. We understood from the beginning that we saw ourselves as a top 10 team in the CIS,” he said. “Now its win or go home on Saturday.”
The women’s final record was 13-6, ranking third in the OUA East division, just below Ottawa and the University of Toronto.
The solid season continued a three-year trend of winning records for the team, this one being led by veteran outside hitter Veronica Livingston.
“[Livingston] was probably the MVP this season. We relied on her a lot,” Reid said. “She had a lot of pressure on her every match and she held up just fine.”
Livingston made 58 set appearances, led the OUA in kills with 226, while setting three career highs in January in digs (19), points (30) and kills (24).
But regular season stats only matter in the regular season, and the women will have to face the team that decimated them in the final game of their season.
“It wasn’t a great match, obviously,” said Reid. “We’ve watched the tape five or six times to try and figure out what happened that day.”
“Hopefully we’ll be ready to face them this time around.”
The game will take place at Ottawa’s Monpetit Hall on Feb. 14, at 2 p.m.
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