Demons advance to state championship game
Santa Fe High beats Cleveland in straight sets
Next stop: the state finals.
Getting dominant play from its front line — not to mention another steady night from a nearly flawless back row — the topseeded Santa Fe High volleyball team swept aside district rival Cleveland on Thursday night in Toby Roybal Memorial Gymnasium and punched its ticket to Saturday’s Class 5A state championship match in The Pit.
It will be the Demons’ first appearance in the finals since winning it all in 1996. They’ll face unbeaten No. 2 seed Centennial, a 3-1 winner over No. 3 La Cueva in Thursday’s other semifinal in Las Cruces.
“I think, yeah, this is just what we thought we’d be doing all along,” said Santa Fe High senior Jorja “Joey” Chambers. “We had the goal all year of getting this far and we’re all pretty happy about it — but we’re not done yet. This isn’t over.”
Santa Fe (10-1) won all three games by identical 25-19 scores, ending the contest on match point when Laila Bernardino’s serve led to an Isabella Melton kill as she rose above the left side of the net. As the ball bounced softly to the floor, it sparked celebration on the court that included the school’s principal and the team’s coaching staff.
“This team, it’s a family that takes care of each other,” said Demons coach Josie Adams as she stood alongside assistant coach Paul Sandoval. “They’re workers and they listen to each other and the coaches. There’s no drama.”
That ability to listen and be coached worked wonders for the Demons on Thursday. Facing an athletic Cleveland program whose primary weapon is senior hitter Arianna Jamerson, it was Sandoval — Santa Fe’s serving coach and a longtime assistant to Adams — who suggested they fire as many serves right at Jamerson when she rotated to the back row.
The plan was to keep her so busy that she might eventually lose some of her firepower.
“We wanted to work her so hard that by time she got up there [to the front row] she was rattled, and we just stuck to our game plan,” Adams said, giving a nod to Sandoval’s input. “We just served them so tough. Every place he told them to put the ball, we just pounded her.”
The turning point was in the second game. Cleveland used a 10-3 run to open a 14-11 lead. On the verge of seizing the momentum, the Storm had it crumble moments later when a Chambers kill in the middle sparked a 6-0 run to snap a 19-all tie and end the game. The final point came when Chambers and Melton rose high above the net to block a Jamerson shot.
Asked about the strength of
Santa Fe’s front line, Chambers said there’s an easy answer to how it all works. Whether it’s the mainstays like her, Bernardino or Melton, or sophomore Eliza Fowler, senior Sydney Pino-Pacheco — or literally anyone else on the roster — the secret to the team’s success is as simple as mastering the skill of team chemistry.
“There isn’t one single player who can do this alone,” Chambers said. “I mean, you hear this a lot, but it is a family.”
Bernardino was the stats-eater Thursday, registering a match-high 16 kills. Time and time again she would have the back row dig out a Cleveland shot and set her up, giving her the chance to drive home one attack after another.
If there was a single volley that defined the persistent work ethic of Santa Fe’s defensive strategy, it was an early sequence that tied up the second game 1-1. The teams exchanged a long set of returns and line drives, finally ending it when Chambers pounded a winner to set the tone.
“This team is filled with a bunch of fighters,” Adams said. “They come at you with everything on every point. It’s been that way since we started all this.”
Saturday’s state finals will be in The Pit. That’s the good news.
The bad is fans will not be permitted to attend. Bernalillo County has still not achieved an elevated green status in the state’s color-coded system for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. Counties that are yellow are prohibited from having spectators at indoor sporting venues.
Fans can watch the game online through the National Federation of State High School Associations streaming service, the NFHS Network.
“It doesn’t matter,” Chambers said. “We love our fans and we all want them there, but this team brings its own energy. We’ve done it all year and we can do it again for a state championship game. We’re not worried about that.”
Centennial (13-0) had little trouble disposing of La Cueva, winning 25-19, 21-25, 25-11, 25-18 in a rematch of the 2019 state finals in Rio Rancho. The Hawks are making their fourth finals appearance in the last five years.