One wouldn’t be too far off base to say the definition of
”
buzzsaw
”
is the Archbishop Mitty girls volleyball team.
SANTA CLARA – One wouldn’t be too far off base to say the definition of “buzzsaw” is the Archbishop Mitty girls volleyball team.
Hollister High, seeded third in the Central Coast Section Division I tournament, was clipped, tripped and dipped as the machine-like Monarchs prevailed 15-6, 15-6, 15-8 in Thursday night’s semifinal at Santa Clara High.
The 2nd-seeded Monarchs (31-4) take on the nation’s top-ranked team, St. Francis (25-1) in Saturday’s D-I championship match at West Valley College at 7 p.m. in a battle of titantic volleyball programs.
Barring a major upset, the two teams will meet in the NorCal finals with the winner off to the state meet at Cypress College on Dec. 7.
Meanwhile, the best volleyball team ever at Hollister High must be content with its 30-5 record and its highest-ever rankings of No. 9 in the state and 44th in the U.S.
Coach Larry Nabzeska, who retired after five straight league titles at the school along with a 2001 CCS D-I runner-up trophy, admits the finality “hasn’t sunk in just yet.”
“This has been a truly great team,” said Nabzeska of his Balers. “We never quit. Mitty was the better team tonight. That’s the best I’ve seen them play this year. They kept us off-balance.”
Even more credence to the Monarchs’ superior display of volleyball came from St. Francis head coach Kim Oden, a two-time U.S. Olympic Team captain.
“The way Mitty handled Hollister impressed me,” said Oden. “Mitty was very sharp and very focused. They seem like they’re hitting on all cylinders right now. They had their ‘A’ game working tonight.”
The Balers, by their own admission, didn’t have their ‘A’ game working at all. Part of their game is emotion.
“We didn’t seem pumped up tonight,” said the Balers Kaylie Kortsen. “When we beat them in the tournament we were pumped up on every point. When we scored tonight, we didn’t seem excited.”
The other part was execution of the offense and it wasn’t there often enough for the Balers. Passes and sets weren’t true, which meant a violation or the Monarchs gaining a freeball, which is giving too much away to a great team.
The closest Hollister came in game one was on a block by next year’s star – junior Melissa Moore – to cut the Monarchs’ lead to 6-4. The Balers were never really in game two, down 7-1, then 7-3 at best.
Between games two and three, the Hollister players gathered in a circle with their arms around each other as one, jumped and hollered in an effort to get the blood flowing.
It nearly worked.
A Jacky Denton jump serve gave the Balers a 4-3 lead and Kortsen’s jump serve found a hole for 5-3. That was the Balers’ biggest lead of the night. Kim Dabo killed a free ball for 6-5, then it was pretty much all Mitty.
Even Nabzeska realized the powerful Monarchs never let the Balers make a run.
“We never scored more than two points in a row,” said Nabzeska.
“We wanted to keep Hollister down in game three,” said Mitty coach Bret Almazan-Cezar. “They do a wonderful job playing with emotion and with their fans. They’ve done it to us before and we didn’t want them to do it this time.”
The Monarchs were led by a huge front line of 6-foot-1 Christina Kirk, 6-2 Bethany Johansen and 5-10 Emily Allen. The Monarchs, with a plethora of weapons, were balanced as can be. Allen had a match-high 12 kills, Kirk with nine and Johansen, who put the ball down better than anyone on the floor, had seven kills. Murphy McClenahan added eight kills for the Monarchs, who had an awe-inspiring hitting percentage of .500.
“We played clean tonight,” said Almazan-Cezar. “We gave our setter K.C. Walsh plenty of options.”
And Walsh was right on the money were her sets, which typified the way Mitty played the entire match. They didn’t make many mistakes and never let Hollister in the match.
Baler bit: Assistant coach Chuck Shallhorn is the early buzz to take over for Nabzeska next season. “That’s the plan,” said Shallhorn.
