Unique team captures CCS
There’s another championship banner coming to San Benito High
School’s gymnasium. Only this time it’s a flag that has never been
home to the Hollister school before. This time it’s a standard
recognizing the winners of the 2006 Central Coast Section Division
I volleyball tournament.
Unique team captures CCS
There’s another championship banner coming to San Benito High School’s gymnasium. Only this time it’s a flag that has never been home to the Hollister school before. This time it’s a standard recognizing the winners of the 2006 Central Coast Section Division I volleyball tournament.
It’s a banner that Baler players past and present and their fans have been waiting for for a number of years. On Saturday night at Independence High School in San Jose that long wait came to an end as the No. 1 seed Balers defeated No. 3 seed Homestead High 25-19, 25-22, 22-25, 25-19.
“Oh my gosh, this is so exciting – the happiest moment of my life,” said Baler junior Emily Kortsen, who had 23 kills and 14 digs in the title game to lead her team. “This year, seemed like our most likely year to win CCS. We were strongest this year, more than any other. We were just more pumped up than they were. Everyone was nervous but we were pumped. We just did our jobs, I guess.”
“We’re thrilled, really, really thrilled to win CCS,” Baler head coach Dean Askanas said. “It’s been two years in the making.”
In 2004, the Balers lost to their Tri County Athletic League rivals Salinas in the championship game, and last year they lost to Carlmont in a grueling, five-game match that was decided by an ever-so-slim 20-18 margin in the last game.
“I think Emily (Kortsen), Chelsea (Fowles) and Bri (Romero) all played particularly well. Our confidence and team chemistry was there all season too,” Askanas said. “We were excited but we felt like we should be there. The team stepped it up and did it.”
Although the Balers were thrilled to win their first-ever section title in school history, there wasn’t much time to celebrate before they had to focus on their next games. In winning CCS the Balers qualified to compete this week in the Northern California State Championship.
On Tuesday night after press time the Balers faced Antioch’s Deer Valley High School in the opening round of the state tournament. After that they were expected to face Auburn’s Nevada Union High School on Saturday.
“Winning Tuesday won’t be easy to do,” said Askanas on Monday night. “It would be incredible to win Nor Cals, but we’d have to play even been than we’ve been playing. We played well enough to win CCS but I don’t think we played our best. We’ll need to do that in this tournament.”
If the Balers do win Nor Cals and advance all the way to the California state championship, they won’t have to travel far as the state title game this year will take place at San Jose State University on Dec. 2.
“I think if we play our best we can easily make it to the Nor Cal championship game,” Kortsen said. “If we win that it would be really cool because the state championship is at San Jose State, not too far from home.”
Although his team is playing well, Askanas knows the biggest hurdle at Nor Cals will be getting past Pleasanton’s Foothill High School, a team that went 35-0 this season.
Against Homestead the key was for the Balers to build an early lead and not look back.
“Homestead is a good team, but we had more offensive weapons,” Askanas said. “They had a good outside hitter who was strong enough to keep them in the match. I think if we played our strongest offense and defense, we would have dominated the game a little more. But there was a lot of pressure on us. It was our third year in a row in the finals.”
After winning the first two games against Homestead, the Balers went on a hitting lull and started to struggle to put the ball away in game three and four. Those struggles would lead to Homestead narrowing the match to 2-1 in games.
“We started tipping the ball more in those games and not hitting it,” Askanas said. “That is a sign of nervousness, but then we started to get back into it when it mattered most.”
The Balers captured the deciding game by a 25-19 margin to ice the CCS title.
In addition to Kortsen, several other Baler players had strong performances. Fowles, who will attend Utah State next year on a full volleyball scholarship, had 39 assists and four aces in the winning effort, which brings her season assists total up to a whopping 874. Fowles also had eight kills. Outside hitters Bri Romero had nine kills and Morgan O’Laughlin had 10 in the winning effort.
