Sam Zacharias has been a dominating force during her career with the Briercrest Clippers’ women’s volleyball team.

The Waldheim, Saskatchewan product won her third straight ACAC women’s volleyball player of the year award a few weeks ago after putting together another stellar season with the Clippers.

Zacharias said the honour of winning the award never gets old.

“Obviously the first year was a pretty big deal and it continues to be,” she said. “It’s awesome to win the award, it’s super humbling and it’s totally a team award every year.”

During the 2016-17 season, Zacharias led the CCAA in kills with 347, service aces with 99 and points with 459.5. Her 178 digs were 12th in the ACAC, while she also had 14 assists and 13 blocks.

Zacharias became the third women’s volleyball player in ACAC history to surpass 1,000 career kills this past season, finishing the year with 1,041 in her career.

She also broke her own ACAC record for services aces in a season.

“I just continue to push myself,” said Zacharias. “I’m a super competitive person and I like to be the best, but everyday in practice and in games, I work my hardest to do the best that I can and hopefully do some good things.”

The Clippers put together a regular season to remember with a 20-4 record in league play, but their season came to an unceremonious end in the first round of the ACAC playoffs.

Zacharias said an injury to a key player late in the season ended up being too much for the team to overcome.

“We were just missing that aspect on the court and pulling another player in with only a couple of weekends left and expecting the team chemistry that we had before was unlikely,” she said. “That was pretty hard to go through that adversity.”

The Clippers were a young team and Zacharias said that losing out after such a strong regular season is making for a hungry team heading into next season.

“Expecting to do so well this year, like make nationals and stuff like that, will definitely drive us even more for next season,” she said.

Zacharias lost the CCAA women’s volleyball player of the year award to Vancouver Island University’s Megan Rosenlund. She was named to the All-Canadian team for a third straight year.

Zacharias, along with her sister Ashley and Karina Peterson were named to the ACAC South Division All-Conference team.

Clippers’ head coach Nolan Weinmaster was the ACAC South Division Coach of the Year.