LANGLEY, British Columbia – The No. 10 Trinity Western men's volleyball team wrapped up a weekend sweep of Regina with a 3-0 (25-19, 25-23, 25-18) win Saturday at the Langley Events Centre.

Ryan Sclater (Port Coquitlam, B.C.) had a match-high 12 kills while hitting .500 to lead TWU (5-3), as the Spartans improved to 4-0 on home court this year.

The Cougars dropped to 1-9 on the season and enter a bye week having lost nine straight.

First-year Pearse Eshenko (Banff, Alta.) had his best night as a Spartan, collecting eight kills and a match-high five blocks while Blake Scheerhoorn (Belleville, Ont.) added seven kills. Aaron Boettcher (Surrey, B.C.) finished with six kills and three blocks.

Regina's Matthew Lueck had seven kills to lead the visitors while Joshua Nickel added six kills. Jacques Borgeaud had a match-high 11 digs.

As a team, TWU hit .275 while hold Regina to a .095 hitting percentage. The Spartans also had a 9-4 advantage in blocks.

"I thought our middle attacking was what we did the best tonight," said Spartans coach Ben Josephson. "Pearse and Aaron were really effective and efficient. Teams have to give us the pipe or the middle and when they gave us the middle, our middles were good. I was also really happy with our reception. We changed some formations in our reception and they held up."
 
In the first set, Sclater had five kills and Scheerhoorn had four to lead the Spartans to a six-point win. TWU had a 5-1 edge in blocks and the home side cruised to a convincing victory. On the opposite side of the net, the Cougars had just four kills and hit -.090.  

The second set was closer throughout, but with third-year TWU setter Adam Schriemer (Winnipeg) taking over setting duties early in the set from Devyn Plett (Winnipeg), the Spartans pulled out a two-point win.  Second-year TWU middle Aaron Boettcher (Surrey, B.C.) had five kills on five attacks to lead the Spartans.

TWU carried its momentum into the third set and cruised its most convincing win of the night. Regina's Lueck had four kills on seven attacks without committing an error, but the Spartans countered by hitting .318 as a team.
 
"We had two really good weeks of prep to try and clean up some of the deficiencies, but what we saw as the weekend went on was that our bad habits crept in more and more," Josephson said. "But that just goes to show you that you can't solve problems with a couple weeks of hard training. It's going to be a long process, but with that being said, I thought we made some great strides forward towards the type of team we need to be."

The Spartans will now travel to play MacEwan Nov. 20-21. Regina is back in action Nov. 27-28 when it hosts Manitoba.

Game Notes: TWU had a 6-1 edge in aces…the Spartans had 19 serving errors compared to Regina, who had nine.

-TW-