In his first start of his university men’s volleyball career, Trinity Western University left side Eric Loeppky led his team with 11 kills to help guide the nationally No. 2-ranked Spartans to a 3-0 win over Regina Saturday at the Centre for Kinesiology, Health & Sport.
Set scores were 25-16, 25-12, and 25-22.
Loeppky, along with Jacob Kern and Pearce Eshenko formed the Spartans’ leading attacking trio on the night, as Eshenko finished with seven kills while Kern had six kills.
The win capped a perfect weekend for the Spartans as they took all six sets in their two-match series with Regina.
Setter Adam Schriemer had 32 assists while Aaron Boettcher had three aces.
“It was pretty cool to see Eric Loeppky’s first start tonight,” said Spartans coach Ben Josephson. “He had a lot of friends and family there and he was awesome. He had a couple of unreal serving runs and a couple great shots that were just special. I thought Adam [Schriemer] was masterful again. He ran a great offence and kept us doing what we were doing.”
Josephson added, “We played a little sloppier than last night, but that is mostly due to our opponent. They made a bunch of adjustments that took us out of some of the things that were working last night. But I thought our kids did a good job of adjusting back and finding new solutions and overall I’m pretty happy to get out of here with two clean wins.”
TWU hit .333 as a team compared to Regina’s .056.
The Spartans scored the first point of the opening set and never trailed the rest of the way. They opened up a nine-point lead at 20-11 and then traded points the rest of the way.
In the second set, TWU hit .550 as a team and committed just one attacking error en route to a 13-point win.
With momentum on their side, TWU jumped out to another early lead in the third set and never relinquished control. A block by Eshenko and Loeppky capped a dominant win for the Spartans.
TWU will now return home to host Calgary in the Spartans home-opening weekend Friday and Saturday (Nov. 4-5) at the Langley Events Centre.
The weekend set is a rematch of last year’s Canada West quarter-final series in which TWU rallied to win in three games after dropping the first game of the best-of-three series.
