Burnaby NOW • Friday, November 2, 2012 • A29
30 Three to SA Challenge 30 Giants still unbeaten
31 Battle of the unbeaten
SECTION COORDINATOR Tom Berridge, 604-444-3022 • tberridge@burnabynow.com
Slow and steady wins the race Tom Berridge sports editor
There is something about the moral from The Tortoise and the Hare fable that suits Megan Ellis. The 22-year-old outside hitter with the Portland State Vikings volleyball team has made the most of her opportunities with the NCAA Division I women’s program, and is now poised to graduate as one of its all-time greats. The Alpha Secondary School grad surpassed the 900-kill mark in her university career following her 14th double-double this season in a two-game sweep over Montana State last weekend. She has also bettered 700 kills earlier this month. It was Ellis’s all-around skills that initially caught the eye of Portland State’s new head coach Michael Seemann while on a scouting mission to the Lower Mainland. “What I saw was a player with good size and she stood out amongst the 100-odd players. ... She’s a big, strong athlete.” Being a big fish in a small pond served Ellis well in her high school years. She led the tiny Alpha program to a provincial high school AAA banner in 2006 and a bronze medal the year before. Ellis was also named MVP at the 2007 provincial club championships with the Coquitlam Ducks and got a first-team all-star nod at the nationals. But making the jump to NCAA’s Division I was a bigger leap for the Burnaby product. “It definitely was,” said Ellis on a long-distance call from Portland. “It’s just how competitive the sport is. There are 12 scholarships on the team and 15 (players) competing for six spots on the court.” Ellis red-shirted her first season with the Vikings before seeing limited action as a second-year freshman. As a sophomore, she was displaced on the depth charts by the transfer in of Whitney Phillips, who became a two-time Big Sky conference first team all-star at
Tom Berridge
sports editor
Photo courtesy of Scott Larson Portland State Athletics
Do it all: Burnaby’s Megan Ellis, in white, is putting up career numbers in the NCAA Division I for the Portland State University Vikings women’s volleyball program this season.
Portland State and MVP in 2010. “I think that year I was on the bench it helped me as an allaround player,” Ellis said. “It just made me work on the skills that are important and what I needed to put myself on the court. That’s what I’ve been working on.” After a successful junior year last season when she earned conference first-team honours, Ellis
had to again adjust her game with the transfer of junior Jaklyn Wheeler to the Vikings’ program this year. Together, the pair of outside hitters have become a potent onetwo punch in the conference for the league-leading 13-1 Vikings. “There is always that doubt – and it happened to me in my second and third years – when I
was thinking, ‘When am I going to earn my spot?’ It was almost everything I wanted. … But that came later,” said Ellis, who is a two-time all-academic student/ athlete with a triple major in business. For Portland State, the hiring of Seemann as head coach in 2006 Volleyball Page 31
SFU sinks Vikes in opening dual meet Simon Fraser University sunk host University of Victoria in the opening dual swim meet of the season. The Clan men won 11 of 15 events against the Vikings, while the SFU women’s team nearly tripled UVic 329-112 last Saturday. Nicole Cossey set a new dual meet mark of 26.41 in the 50-metre freestyle, bet-
Moscrop to host playoff and Mainlands
tering the old 2003 record set by New Westminster’s Amber Dykes by more than one-tenth of a second. Cossey also won the 50m butterfly. Carman Nam won three events for the Clan, earning victories in the 200, 400 and 800m free. Freshman Brianna Bailey took first place in both the 100 and 200m breaststroke.
Alex Schofield, Courtney Triano, Katrina Sharpe and Mariya Chekanovych of Burnaby also earned wins at the meet. On the men’s side, Julian Monks led the Clan team with three victories. Monks won the 50m butterfly, while also taking top spot in the breaststroke. He set a new Clan dual meet record in the 200m
breast, winning in a time of 2:19.09, while bettering the long-standing 1993 mark set by Jason Meyer by five seconds. Dimitar Ivanov was another three-event winner, placing first in the 50 and 200m backstroke and 200m individual medley. Ivanov’s 200m back time brokeAndrewLennstrom’s 1995 record time by almost two seconds.
Travis Kam also won three races in his firstever collegiate meet. Kam placed first in the 50 and 100m free, while also setting a new school mark in the 100m back. Kam’s 57.41 time bettered the old record set by Kurt Ouchie in 1999. Other Clan winners included Adam Kautz and Swim Page 30
The Moscrop Panthers wrapped up first place with a straight set victory over Burnaby Mountain in district senior boys’ volleyball on Tuesday. The No. 7 provincially ranked Panthers coasted to a 25-8, 25-15, 25-19 win over Mountain to finish the Burnaby/New Westminster regular season schedule with an unblemished record. As the first-place finisher, Moscrop will host the boys’ district playoffs on Thursday. The banner final game is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. The Panthers are also the hosts for the Lower Mainland zone provincial qualifying tournament that will take place the following week. With four final appearances in four senior tournaments this season, including the team’s second title of the season last week in Richmond, Moscrop is poised to make another run to the AAA provincial championships. With all-star libero Marcus Jung, setter Zach Or and Grade 11 power hitter J.J. Cross, Moscrop has been ranked as high as third overall in the provincial high school rankings this season. “We have a really good core of leadership. It’s not really a high school team, it’s just so different,” said Moscrop volunteer cocoach Kim Or. “It’s like a family. It’s the journey. We’re walking through this together.” But winning an elusive Lower Mainland title will take a solid effort from every player on the squad, Or added. “Last year, we overachieved. This year we have a target on our backs. There are no easy games.” The Grade 10 Moscrop girls will also play host to the district junior playvolleyball downs, which will take place on Wednesday next week at the westside school. “All of them want to five-peat,” said Or, who also coaches the junior girls’ team at Moscrop. “They want it, just like the boys.”