Abbotsford – The University of the Fraser Valley volleyball teams’ final season in the PACWEST conference will be bookended by games vs. their crosstown rivals, the Columbia Bible College Bearcats.
The Cascades open the 2019-20 campaign with a home-and-home series with the Bearcats – Friday, Oct. 11 at UFV’s Envision Financial Athletic Centre, and Saturday, Oct. 12 at Columbia Place. The regular season concludes with a Feb. 14-15 set, Friday at CBC and Saturday at UFV.
The coming season marks the end of an era for the UFV women’s and men’s volleyball programs, as they’ve been accepted into the Canada West conference for the 2020-21 season. UFV has been a member of the PACWEST (formerly known as the B.C. Colleges Athletic Association) since 1983, and this year marks the volleyball teams’ 18th season (1983-85, and 2004-present) of competition.
UFV WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL SCHEDULE
Other key schedule details:
• The Cascades’ Jan. 10-11 clash with the Vancouver Island University Mariners will be among the most exciting homecourt weekends of the season. The Mariners women are two-time defending CCAA national champions, while the VIU men are the reigning PACWEST conference champs and took bronze at last season’s CCAA nationals.
• The Cascades volleyball teams play exclusively on Fridays and Saturdays, with the exception of their Oct. 26-27 home set vs. the College of the Rockies Avalanche. The series opens Saturday evening (women 5 p.m., men 7 p.m.), and wraps up with an unusually early Sunday start (women 11 a.m., men 1 p.m.).
• The Douglas Royals will host the PACWEST volleyball championships, Feb. 20-22 in New Westminster. The top six teams on the men’s and women’s sides advance to the tourney, with the top two seeds receiving byes to the semifinals.
• National championship hosts are St. Thomas University (Fredericton, N.B.) on the men’s side, and Cégep Garneau (Quebec City) on the women’s. Both tourneys run March 11-14.
• All Cascades regular-season and conference playoff games will be webcast at pacwestbc.tv.
