Mira Costa girls volleyball sweeps Village Christian to advance to semifinals
MANHATTAN BEACH >> The Mira Costa and Village Christian girls volleyball teams had no shortage of film on one another, and most of Wednesday’s CIF-Southern Section Division 1 quarterfinal playoff match was decided by the slimmest of margins.
Fourth-seeded Mira Costa did enough to wear down No. 5 Village Christian in a sweep to advance to Saturday’s semifinals. The teams split four meetings this season.
The Mustangs (27-7) won the match 25-23, 25-23, 25-17 and waiting for them in the semifinals will be top-seeded Marymount (29-0), which swept Harvard-Westlake in the quarterfinals.
“(Marymount) is the best team in the country, there’s no question,” Mira Costa coach Cam Green said. “They’re well-coached and good in every spot. We know we’re going to have a battle and we’re really excited about it. We’ve been wanting to play them all year and we have a ton of respect for what they do.”
Mira Costa and Village Christian (27-8) entered the playoffs with identical two-week breaks between matches after earning opening-round byes. Village Christian came out flat, producing four consecutive attack errors and a violation to help Mira Costa jump out to a 6-2 lead in the opener. A timeout settled down the Crusaders, who quickly knotted the set at 7.
However, nine attack errors proved to be too much to overcome, including the set’s final point, as the Mustangs took a 1-0 lead.
“Our mentality was huge,” Green said. “There were a lot of opportunities for us to get rattled. … Those first two sets were really tight and we just kind of stayed the course.
“We weren’t killing them in one area and they weren’t killing us in one area.”
The second set was tied 16 times before Mira Costa prevailed by an identical score, 25-23, thanks in part to six of Drew Knight’s 10 kills.
After recording a service ace late in the first set, Isabel Wilmot continued to make a difference at the service line against the Crusaders.
Trailing 21-20, a pair of long attacks gave Mira Costa the lead before its own error tied it at 23. Deanna Dollar’s errant serve swung the momentum back one last time and Shannon Knight closed the set for Mira Costa with a kill.
“They executed and we didn’t execute,” Crusaders coach Brent Asuka said. “Even at the highest levels, whoever wins the serve and pass game is probably going to win the match.”
Trailing 6-5 after back-to-back Payton George blocks in set three, Mira Costa used a 7-1 run to take a five-point lead, matching the largest advantage to that point. Wilmot’s third ace of the match made it 14-8.
“I think we put them in some situations to make it tough for them to get good swings and good sets,” Green said of the final set. “Our serving location was pretty good.
“(Wilmot) served the ball really hard. It’s tough to deal with. It’s so flat that if she’s on, it’s really tough to pass well.”
Village Christian cut the deficit to three on five occasions, the last coming on Payton Hudspeth’s kill to pull within 18-15, but would get no closer. Hudspeth finished with eight kills.