The University of Regina's women's volleyball team locked up a huge weekend sweep on Saturday night after taking a four-set victory over Thompson Rivers at the Centre for Kinesiology, Health & Sport.

The Cougars came into the weekend tied with TRU in the Canada West standings, but are now 8-8 after the two wins and have vaulted into a four-way tie for fifth place as they continue to work towards qualifying for their first postseason since 2014.

After the two teams split the opening two sets, the Cougars took control following the technical timeout in the third. They trailed 16-13 at that point, but scored seven of the next nine points to take the lead and got three late Brooklyn Reynolds kills to help them to a 25-22 win. Regina again took over around the technical timeout in the fourth, this time in dominant fashion – they piled up five straight points with Kathleen Ens serving and never looked back, clinching the match on a block by Ens and setter Satomi Togawa that gave them a 25-16 win.

Reynolds finished as the U of R's leader in kills with 11, while Jessica Lerminiaux added 10 and Ens put down nine. Togawa finished with 33 assists, eight digs, and also put up three kills – one of which was of the emphatic variety and capped a big 7-1 run by the Cougars late in the fourth. Fourth-year libero Taylor Ungar was her usual impressive self on the defensive side of the ball, tying for the match lead with 17 digs.

One night after torching Regina for 23 kills, Thompson Rivers star Rachel Windhorst was limited to eight kills but with a negative hitting percentage in Saturday's match. Yevgeniya Nyukhalova carried the bulk of the mail for the TRU offence, putting down 21 kills while hitting at an impressive .410 clip.

Thompson Rivers falls to 6-10 with the two losses and now sit two wins back of the pack of teams tied for the final four Canada West postseason positions. Fortunately for TRU, seven of its final eight conference matches will be in the friendly confines of the Tournament Capital Centre in Kamloops starting next weekend with a pair of games against Saskatchewan. TRU also has two home games against Calgary (Jan. 26/27), a home-and-home with UBC Okanagan (Feb. 8/10), and a pair of home games against Trinity Western (Feb. 16/17) left on the docket.

Regina will now prepare for four consecutive home matches, the first two of which will come next weekend against a 12-4 Trinity Western team. They'll also face MacEwan on the road twice the following weekend before closing out the Canada West schedule with home matches against UBC (Feb. 2/3) and Manitoba (Feb. 9/10).