March 4 - The Manitoba Bison men's volleyball team were seeded fifth coming into the CIS National Championships held at the University of Laval and knocked off the #4 ranked Dalhousie Tigers in a thrilling five set match by a score of 3-2 (22-25, 25-22, 25-17, 23-25, 15-9).

In the Dalhousie match, CIS Second Team All-Canadian Toon van Lankvelt has 16 kills and 18 digs while Matt Balchin led the team with 20 kills. Alex de Chantal contributed 17 digs and setter Kyle Joslin had 46 assists.

Complete statistics...

Manitoba now advances to the CIS Semi Finals where they will face off against the #1 Alberta Golden Bears. The Bisons have played the Bears on three occasions and lost all three (3-1, 3-0 in late November and 3-0 in Canada West Final Four last weekend).

This is the 24th out of the last 25 years for a team led by head coach Garth Pischke to make the CIS National Championships (only year missed was the 1996-97 season). The team is trying to improve on last year's showing at the CIS when they lost in the bronze medal match to Trinity Western by a 3-1 score (29-27, 25-16, 16-25, 25-21).

Friday, March 4

• 12 pm York 1 vs. Trinity Western 3
• 2 pm Montréal 0 vs. Saskatchewan 3
• 5 pm Manitoba 3 vs. Dalhousie 2
• 7 pm Laval 0 vs. Alberta 3

Saturday, March 5

• 12 pm Consolation Semi-Final #1 Montréal vs. York
• 2 pm Consolation Semi-Final #2 Dalhousie vs. Laval
• 5 pm Semi-Final #1 Saskatchewan vs. Trinity Western
• 7 pm Semi-Final #2 Manitoba vs. Alberta

Sunday, March 6

• 10:00 am 5th Place Game
• 12:00 pm Bronze Medal Game
• 3:30 pm Gold Medal Game