The University of Regina's women's volleyball team's season came to an end on Saturday night after a three-set loss to UBC in Vancouver, giving the Thunderbirds a two-match sweep in a best-of-three Canada West quarterfinal series.

The win not only sends UBC to the conference semifinals next weekend, but also qualifies the Thunderbirds for the 2018 U SPORTS Championship hosted by Laval.

Saturday's match opened up much like Friday with the Cougars coming out of the gates hard. Regina scored the opening six points of the match, but UBC called a timeout to stop the bleeding and it was all Thunderbirds from there. UBC scored seven of the next eight points to tie it up, then went on a massive 9-0 run around the media timeout with Olivia Furlan serving to take complete control of the set.

After the first-set turnaround, UBC rolled through the next two sets with twin 25-14 wins to take the match and the series.

Furlan and Anna Price both had nine kills for UBC, while Kiera Van Ryk finished with eight. Alessandra Gentile (22 assists, 11 digs) and Samantha Patko (14 digs) were also major contributors for the Thunderbirds.

Ashlee Sandiford led Regina with six kills.

While the loss puts an end to the U of R's 2017-18 campaign, it was a spectacular turnaround season for the Cougars. After winning one match in 2015-16 and three a season ago, the Cougars were 12-12 in Canada West play this year and returned to the postseason for the first time since 2014. Without a single fifth-year player on this year's roster, Regina will look to continue the upward trend next season and make a run at the 2019 national tournament which will be hosted by the University of Alberta.