Elite status has arrived for Marin Catholic
Wildcats enter game against Bishop O’Dowd with high stakes
For four seasons now, the Marin Catholic High girls volleyball team has been knocking on the door as one of the top teams in Northern California. As good as the Wildcats have been, though, there was always a bigger fish standing in their way.
This year, the Wildcats ascended to the top of the NorCal food chain — taking over the top ranking early in the season and maintaining it ever since. On Tuesday, the top- seeded Wildcats can confirm their place as the best team in the region with a victory against No. 6 Bishop O’Dowd in the NorCal Open Division championship game.
“It’s a lot of hard work that
these girls are putting in in our gym,” MC coach Jake Spain said of his team’s success. “It’s a really special culture — how we act off the court is as important as what we do on the court.”
The core of this MC team is made up of two senior standouts in Loyola Marymountbound Kari Geissberger and Harvard-bound Olivia Cooper, plus a quarter of sophomores — Leah Wilton-LaBoy, Julianna Treadway, Grace Oliva and Bella McGirr.
“Those kids have been good since they started playing volleyball,” Cooper said of the sophomores. “They have a real
knack for it. Freshman year, it’s very different playing in these games because as a freshman you don’t really know what to expect. You’re playing against 18 year olds. It’s very overwhelming but they came back very seasoned this year. They are not playing like sophomores. They are playing with a lot of experience and confidence and that really helps us as a team. After Kari and I are gone, we’ll have a core group left.”
Creating the culture
A combination of talent, coaching, hard work and culture has MC on the precipice of making it to the biggest game in California prep volleyball. The winner of Tuesday’s match advances to the Open Division state title game — set for 6:30 p.m. on Saturday at Santiago Canyon College in Orange.
“When I first started this thing (eight years ago), I was pretty young,” Spain said. “You slowly develop the culture you want it to be. It’s not something that happens overnight. … I’ve been blessed to have a ton of great coaches in this program with me. It’s not something that one person
gets to do.
“I have great assistant coaches this year ( Mackenzie Albrecht, Delaney Swanson and Mike Buller) that have made this so fun and exciting. They’re all driving an hour- plus to be at practices this year. It starts with that level of commitment. If you want to be part of something great, you have to be willing to sacrifice.”
The players have also bought into this culture, putting in countless hours of work both on the practice court and in the weight room.
“They want to be great at this sport,” Spain said. “It’s not a casual, ‘ This is what I wanna do this day’ thing. These kids love this sport and are high achievers in all aspects. Volleyball is just a piece of that.”
Iron sharpens iron
One advantage MC has over most other teams is its bench is packed with quality players who push the first team hard in practice.
“We have a full team,” Spain said. “Our practices are so fun with the stuff that we’re able to do. We have the right mix of great senior leadership and we have a mix of young kids who are super competitive. One of our biggest things that we have this year, we have our ‘God squad’ — our side that’s competing against our starters every day in practice. They’re ready to go when called upon and make our practices better.”
Practice the day before the NorCal semifinal win over Archbishop Mitty on Saturday was especially spirited and led both Spain and his seniors leaders to believe the team was ready to take the next step.
“They work super hard in practice,” Geissberger said of the bench players. “Our (defensive specialists) especially were like pushing us to our limit. Grace Hovan, Nikki Steil, they’ll go on the outside and right side and Jake tells them what the other team will hit like and they do that, mimicking it.
They push us to be better and I love them so much because they push us. They make us a better team.”
The bench players have continued to work hard and have kept the energy up on the sideline during games while they wait for their time to shine.
“I went back and rewatched the film (of the win against Mitty),” Spain said. “Every single point, it’s not just the six on the court who are all in, it’s all 14 kids that are on the edge and celebrating every point. That’s always been my vision as a coach — whether you can get all 14 kids to buy in.”
The path to the top
Marin Catholic wasn’t always a juggernaut. Spain took over the program eight years ago and as recently as six years ago the Wildcats were being frozen out of the MCAL title game by Redwood and Branson.
Players like Carol Rafferty (a senior on the Virginia Tech volleyball team) and Julia Malet ( Bryant University) restored MC’s playoff pedigree by leading the team to a section title in 2014 — the first of six in a row for the program. Another wave of talented players came in and MC became a dominant force within the MCAL — a league that typically houses three section title contenders every season.
“We had Riley Ramsey and Ry Goodwin — they helped take us to the top of the MCAL and now we were starting to make Open Divisons,” Spain said. “Leah Pease and Georgia Fusco came in — you add them in with some of those older players — they really helped elevate us to a real volleyball school. It’s not just a program, it’s a community that we’re all a part of. They really helped take it to new levels.”
The 2017 team — one that athletic director Adam Callan admits he thought might be the best team MC would ever have — provided one of the big breakthrough moments, taking the program to its first NorCal Open title game.
“Two years ago, they had a really good team,” Callan said. “They went in and they played Mitty for the NorCal championship when Mitty was the mythical national champion. ( The Wildcats) were up every set and they played ( Mitty) tougher than almost any team played them in the playoffs. Even though they lost in three sets, that really helped them believe that they were a team that could do special things.”
Geissberger and Cooper were sophomores on that team and have now led the Wildcats back to the pinnacle as seniors.
“One of the best parts about MC volleyball is the culture and that comes from the seniors before us in years past,” Cooper said. “That’s something (Spain) really tries to enforce on the team is to make sure that the culture is clean and happy and that we all love each other.
“Being good to each other has always been an integral part of our program. That’s really laid the groundwork for the team that we are today. I wish I could say thank you to those seniors. We really inherited a great program with great people.”