Lady Horsemen face SFHS in semis
Pool D was the talk of a lot of volleyball coaches at Santa Fe High and Capital on Friday morning.
By Friday afternoon, the St. Michael’s Lady Horsemen didn’t mind the conversation.
When the Tournament of Champions commenced pool play at 8 a.m., the talk centered around how loaded Pool D was. The quartet of Las Vegas Robertson, St. Michael’s, Piedra Vista and Pojoaque Valley were a combined 16-3 heading into Capital’s Edward A. Ortiz Memorial Gymnasium, making it the most competitive pool out of the foursome.
St. Michael’s won the pool, then rolled into Santa Fe High’s Toby Roybal Memorial Gymnasium and hammered defending tournament champion Los Lunas in the gold bracket quarterfinals, 25-15, 25-8, 25-19. The Lady Horsemen will take on gold bracket host Santa Fe High in the semifinals after the Demonettes beat Capital 23-25, 25-18, 25-20, 25-19 in the second quarterfinal.
The other semifinal has Farmington, which swept Los Alamos, taking on Roswell Goddard, which swept Piedra Vista. The semifinal winners will play the tournament championship at 5 p.m. Saturday.
Perhaps the best thing for St. Michael’s (5-1) was playing in such an intense pool. The easiest game — if there was such a thing — it had among the six in pool play was a 25-19 win over Las Vegas Robertson in Game 1. The Lady Horsemen beat Piedra Vista in the final pool play game to earn the top spot in the pool, and took on the Lady Tigers an hour later.
“I think that [win] set the tone,” St. Michael’s senior setter Miquela Martinez said. “PV has always been a big school. They have big girls. And Los Lunas is coming off of winning state, so this was big for us.”
St. Michael’s set the tone in Game 1, using a 15-6 run to build a 21-10 lead capped by a Lily Barker kill that effectively settled the outcome.
Then came the serving run of Martinez’s career to open Game 2. Fourteen times she served the ball; 13 times the ball came back to her. By the time Los Lunas (3-2) got the ball back, St. Michael’s led 14-1.
“I have never done that before in my life,” Martinez said of the service run.
Of course, it wasn’t just her. Barker had a pair of kills, as did Makayla Bohlman. Barker showed significant improvement from last year, as her hitting prowess was on display with 15 kills.
“When she sees how good she hits on the first [swing], her confidence goes boom!” Lady Horsemen head coach Valerie Sandoval said. “And she plays great defense. I play her all the way around. She is amazing, and she’s only 15. Here she is, playing against 18-year-olds and seniors.”
SANTA FE HIGH 3, CAPITAL 1
The Demonettes (4-0) were flying high after winning Pool A. The Lady Jaguars were the walking wounded after losing two key plays at the Moriarty Invitational last weekend.
Despite that, Capital took Game 1, 25-23, thanks to some uncharacteristic errors by the Demonettes.
The Lady Jaguars could not live off of Santa Fe High’s generosity after that. Nor could they stop trio of Salome Romp, Ainsley Reynolds-Smith and Leila Bernadino at the net, as they combined for 48 kills and five blocks.
“I felt like we had [the first game], and we opened the door and let them in,” Santa Fe High head coach Josie Adams said. “We just can’t do that. It is always really really emotional to play them.”
Reynolds-Smith came up big in Game 4, as she helped start a 14-1 run that turned a 9-4 Capital lead into an 18-10 Demonettes advantage with a kill and an ace during a seven-point spurt that erased the deficit. She finished with 13 kills and three blocks, while Bernadino had 12 kills.
Capital (2-3) played without senior outside hitter Deanza Booker, who tore her ACL, and junior defensive specialist Janessa Rivera who broke her right arm. Lady Jaguars head coach Max Vargas brought up four players from the junior varsity and played three of them. They helped Capital finish second in Pool C, and showed they weren’t afraid of the bright lights of varsity play.
“They did OK,” Vargas said. “They weren’t scared or timid. They did their job.”