For the third time in the last five years, TWU has lost to UBC in the Canada West women's volleyball championship match.

The Trinity Western University Spartans saw their hopes of winning their first ever Canada West gold medal dashed Saturday afternoon as they lost to UBC in four sets at the War Memorial Gym.

Set scores in the Canada West women's volleyball final were 25-23, 18-25, 25-18, and 25-20.

For the Spartans, it's the third time in the last five years they have lost to UBC in the conference championship match.

Despite TWU out-hitting UBC .157 to .153 and collecting 17.5 blocks to the T-Birds 11, the visiting Spartans were unable to solve UBC's defence, which was led largely by Canada West MVP Shanice Marcelle.

The T-Birds' fifth-year star had a match-high 16 digs and added four blocks, which limited a typically strong Spartans' attack.

The T-Birds grinded out every point defensively as they were unable to get their own offence running at full power.

After UBC won the first set, the Spartans held the T-Birds to just .121 hitting the rest of the way.

In a losing effort, Alicia Perrin led the Spartans offensively with 11 kills while Amber Brown and Carly Hamilton both had seven.

Kelci French posted 30 assists and 11 digs from the setter spot.

Both teams will now travel to Sherbrooke, Que., where they, along with bronze-medal winning Alberta, will represent Canada West at the CIS national championship from this Thursday to Saturday (Feb. 28 to March 2).

"It was a hard-fought loss," Spartans coach Ryan Hofer said, following the loss. "It was back and forth for a lot of the match and there were just a few things that we didn't execute as well as we could have. We have to make sure we stay aggressive against this team and put them in a little more trouble. They served tough from the base line, which got us into a little trouble. Against a team like UBC, we need to make sure we control the ball better than they do and we struggled to do that tonight.

"I thought the girls gave a lot tonight but as a team we have another level we need to play at and we're hoping we can do that in Quebec."