WINNIPEG – The Winnipeg Wesmen outlasted the Calgary Dinos in five sets Thursday to earn a leg up in their best-of-three Canada West conference play-in series. 

Selva Planincic matched a career-high with 23 kills and the Wesmen women's volleyball team rallied with three straight points in the fifth to earn a 3-2 (23-25, 25-18, 25-17, 22-25, 15-13) win over the Dinos at the Duckworth Centre.

The Wesmen will have a chance to close the series and advance to the conference quarter-final with a win in Match 2, which goes Friday at 7 p.m. CT. 

Planincic also had 13 digs and three aces. She put the exclamation on the match with her 23rd kill of the night after a tense rally that capped a 3-0 Wesmen run. Winnipeg won five of the final six points of the fifth after falling behind 12-10. 

Sophia Hansen led the Dinos with 18 kills and 14 digs. Daisy Olsen added 14 kills and Robyn McLean had 12 with a match-high 18 digs. 

The Wesmen, the tournament's No. 7 seed who finished the season 10-10, got 16 kills from Brooke Duncalfe, eight kills and 13 digs from reserve Ella Werbiski and a team-high 17 digs from libero Taylor Cangemi. 

Winnipeg head coach Phil Hudson was pleased with his team's ability to keep the Dinos on their heels for the most part in the serve game. 

The Wesmen had 11 aces, the eighth time this season they've hit double digits.

"We had really good serving overall and in Set 5 we did a really good job getting them out of system," Hudson said. "If you're going to win a big match like that at the end then a couple of your best players have to come through with a big play and Selva came with a couple big kills." 

And while the Dinos showed resilience to force a fifth after dropping Sets 2 and 3, head coach Christine Biggs emphasized a missed opportunity in not capitalizing on a first set where the Dinos were largely in control. Calgary forced Winnipeg to .027 attacking in the first while hitting .303. 

"We can call it resilience, but we came out and won the first and then we didn't do what we were capable of (in Sets 2 and 3)," Biggs said. "If it's resilience in terms of finding who we are as a team and maintaining that level, I think that's part of the challenge. 

"It's just the game of volleyball. It's a game of errors, there's the beauty of having to go for it to have it go your way and when you go for it there's higher risk involved. I think there was a few errors at times where I'm proud of the errors we made — they're on gameplan, they're what we're going for, but yeah, it's just execution."

The Dinos, who hit .217 on the night, were held to -.034 in the fifth with eight attack errors over seven kills.