Santa Fe’s offense stalls, may miss playoffs with loss
Saturday afternoon was “Senior Day” for the Santa Fe High volleyball team — a day in which to celebrate the five seniors on the roster for the final time in Toby Roybal Memorial Gymnasium.
It inadvertently might have turned into swan song for the Demonettes’ postseason hopes. Needing a win over District 2-6A foe Clovis to ensure a lock on fourth place in the district and strengthen its case for an at-large berth into the Class 6A State Tournament, Santa Fe High instead suffered a crippling blow to those chances as the Lady Wildcats rallied from a 2-0 game deficit to take a 22-25, 21-25, 25-20, 25-16, 16-14 win.
Clovis (10-7 overall, 3-5 in 2-6A) overcame a show start and became the aggressors on the offensive end while also tightening up its defense to slow down the Demonettes’ duo of Adonica Baca-Martinez and Salome Romp. The pair combined for 42 kills overall, but Baca-Martinez struggled after a strong start and had only seven over the last three games. Santa Fe High head coach Sam Estrada was befuddled at the offensive downturn.
“We decided to play a tentative game and started tipping too much,” Estrada said. “At the beginning of the year, I wanted them to tip more, but now we’re tipping too much. We have to find that balance.”
Lady Wildcats head coach Ruth Chavez, though, felt her team’s defense improved after she made a couple of lineup changes that took away some of the angles on the hits by BacaMartinez and Romp.
“We had to change some things to stop [Romp],” Chavez said. “The first two games, we weren’t disciplined enough to do the things we trained them to do. But the last three games, we really got on their discipline and good things started to happen.”
Those good things mostly involved middle hitter Lexi Cole. The 6-foot senior hammered 27 kills and three blocks to lead the comeback. 17 of those kills came over the final three games, including eight in a dominating Game 4 performance for Clovis. But every comeback needs a break, and the Demonettes gave the Lady Wildcats a couple in Game 5. Santa Fe High took an early 6-2 lead, but Clovis scored six of the next eight points thanks to a pair of kills from Cole and a tip kill by Mikayla Harkley to tie the score.
The Demonettes (8-10, 2-6) had a couple of hitting errors in that run, and an accidental bump between teammates Ysabella Trujillo and Alyssa Sandoval caused Sandoval to shank a pass got Clovis within 8-7. Santa Fe High responded with a 4-1 run for a 12-9 lead capped by a Romp kill off of Cole, but Clovis scored the next three points to tie the score.
The teams exchanged points until 14-all when a pair of Demonettes hitting errors allowed the Lady Wildcats to leave the gym with a split in the season series between the teams.
“We would like for them to go down swinging,” Estrada said. “We don’t like to tip the last two points of the game, but sometimes the set isn’t there and you have to do something with it.”
Santa Fe High heads into its final two 2-6A matches against Albuquerque schools Manzano and Eldorado likely needing a sweep to move past Clovis into fourth. The more challenging match will be against the Lady Eagles, who are ranked fifth in the MaxPreps.com’s Freeman rankings that the New Mexico Activities Association uses to help select teams for the postseason. Eldorado is one of three district teams in the top five of those rankings.
“I think we can take them, but we have to play a much better game than we did [against Clovis],” Estrada said. “It’s not the end of the road, but we really did want this win.”