LANGLEY, B.C. – In a battle of the top two ranked teams in all of U SPORTS, the Thunderbirds suffered their first loss of the season in a five-set thriller (29-27, 25-21, 18-25, 22-25, 15-13), after nearly coming all the way back from a 2-0 deficit.
 
With the win, Trinity Western improves to 7-0 and stands as the lone remaining undefeated team in the conference. The T-Birds drop to 6-1, tied with UBC Okanagan for second-best in Canada West.
 
Gavin Moes led the way offensively for UBC with a season-high 19 kills to go with seven digs and a pair of blocks. Dawson Pratt recorded 12 kills, seven digs and four blocks, while Mason Greves had 49 assists, three kills and seven digs.
 
Kaden Schmidt led the Spartans in kills with 18 while also tallying four digs and three blocks. Cory Schoenherr was dominant in the middle with 12 kills on a .556 hitting percentage, as well as eight blocks.
 
It's hard to have a set as close as the two sides did in the first, with the score nearly cracking the 30-point barrier. The T-Birds had some momentum going, with consecutive Reeve Gingera aces putting them up 10-6, but the Spartans rallied and never allowed themselves to trail by more than that.
 
After foiling a Trinity Western set point at 24-23, the T-Birds had two set points of their own that they failed to convert. The Spartans made them pay, with Schmidt and Kyden Dmitruk landing kills to power their team to the early advantage.


 
The second set was the weakest of the night for the 'Birds in terms of the margin of defeat, and that was by just four points. The offence continued to be a little out of rhythm, with the T-Birds hitting .154 as a team after hitting .161 in the first.
 
UBC did rip off a monstrous 8-0 run in the middle of the frame to turn an 11-6 deficit into a 14-11 lead, but that proved to be the high-water mark as the Spartans soon responded with a 7-1 run of their own to reassert control, eventually taking the set 25-21.
 
The powerful Thunderbirds attack found their footing in the third, led by Moes who scored seven of his team's 12 kills in the set. UBC hit a blistering .571 as a team in the third, while holding The Spartans to a paltry .042.
 
Despite that, the Spartans hung around until the latter portion of the frame, when a series of kills from Alex Emery, Moes and then Pratt helped the 'Birds surge out in front. By the time Schmidt whiffed on a swing to end the set, the momentum had swung in favour of the blue and gold.
 
It looked for a minute that said momentum might not continue in the fourth, as the T-Birds didn't get their first lead of the set until a couple of TWU errors and then a Moes kill turned a 16-16 tie into a 19-16 UBC advantage.
 
The Spartans fought hard to rally, but the Thunderbirds forced some more errors and provided some big swings from their talented outside hitters to send the match to a fifth and final set. Fittingly, it was Moes who punctuated the 25-22 win with a pair of thunderous kills to end it.


 
After climbing out of a 2-0 hole in terms of set count, the T-Birds quickly found themselves down 9-4 in the fifth set when a Schoenherr ace bounced unluckily off the foot of Pratt, followed by a Jackson Corneil kill.
 
Once again though, the Thunderbirds fought valiantly. A quick 4-0 burst got themselves right back into proceedings, and when Pratt and Kieran Robinson-Dunning teamed up for a block to knot things up at 13 points apiece, it seemed like the 'Birds might just do it. But a Moes service error followed by Schmidt kill dashed those hopes, and gave Trinity Western the marathon win.
 
These two teams now have the rest of the weekend off, before they head to War Memorial Gym next Friday for the rematch on the UBC campus.