The Santa Barbara High girls’ volleyball team is peaking at the right time.
The Dons were locked in from the start, sweeping visiting Gahr 25-11, 25-20, 25-20 in the quarterfinals of the CIF-SS Division 5 playoffs. They will now travel to Ontario Christian for a semifinal match on Saturday.
“This is the sharpest we’ve looked in a while. We came out in the other playoff matches and needed to sharpen things up at the start,” said Santa Barbara High coach Kristin Hempy. “When we are all firing and we are all locked in, we look like that.”
Santa Barbara narrowly escaped an opening-round match against Rosary, winning in five sets, and defeated Sacred Heart in four sets to reach the quarterfinals.
Gahr entered the quarterfinals with significant momentum after an unbeaten run through the Suburban League and victories over Canyon and Pacifica Christian in the first two rounds, but the Dons set a dominant tone in the opening set.
Back-to-back kills by Blake Saunders gave the Dons a 13-9 lead and sparked a 14-2 run to close out the first set. A kill by Lola Heckman clinched a 1-0 set lead for Santa Barbara.
Tough serving by Santa Barbara continued to keep Gahr off balance, as an ace by Payton Marcillac gave the Dons a 5-4 lead. Another ace by Grace Costner put Santa Barbara ahead 11-7.
A spike by Heckman increased the Dons’ lead to 18-14 and forced a Gahr timeout. Back-to-back kills by Saunders brought the Dons to set point, and Santa Barbara clinched a 2-0 lead on an errant Gahr set.
In the third set, Santa Barbara used a 10-3 run to turn a 9-9 tie into a 19-12 lead on an ace by Saunders.
“With a scrappy team, it’s going to be a lot coming back. I thought we served really well to try and put them out of system, which was effective,” Hempy said. “We worked a lot on smart, tough serving.”
Fittingly, Saunders closed out the match with a spike down the line. She finished with a match-high 16 kills, four aces, and six digs.
“You just have to love watching her because she has such a competitive drive,” Hempy said of Saunders. “We like to use her as much as we can — feed her the ball whether it’s the front row or the back row — and she really sparks the team when she gets going like that.”
Marcillac and Horton added three aces apiece, while freshman setter Eloise Becker came in and made an impact with five assists and two digs.
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