SFIS turning corner after defeat

Last week, Santa Fe Indian School struggled to an eighth-place finish at the Tournament of Champions.

On Friday, the Lady Braves showed that they grew from that experience at their own Pink Classic volleyball tournament as they won their pool-play division to advance to Saturday’s gold bracket. SFIS went 7-1 in Pool B to tie Socorro for the top spot, but won it thanks to owning the point-differential tiebreaker when the two teams played each other.

The Lady Braves hammered the Lady Warriors 25-14 in the first game, before Socorro bounced back to win the second one 25-18. The plus-four differential allowed SFIS to advance to the gold bracket, which pits the winners of all four pools against each other.

Joining the Lady Braves are Pecos (Pool D), Estancia (Pool C) and Moriarty (Pool A). SFIS will take on the Lady Bears at 10 a.m. Saturday in the Pueblo Pavilion in a rematch of a Sept. 10 contest that went to Estancia in four games. The loss started the current five match losing streak — pool play does not impact teams’ records.

Meanwhile, Pecos suffered its first loss of the season when it split pool play games against Santa Fe Prep. It won’t count against the Lady Panthers’ record because it occurred in pool play, which determined which teams went into the gold, silver, bronze, copper and maroon brackets.

Santa Fe Prep missed out on the gold bracket by splitting a pair of games with Wingate, while Pecos didn’t drop another game in the Pool D.

The Blue Griffins are in the silver bracket and play Navajo Prep, the A runner-up, at 8 a.m.

SFIS head coach Brian Gurule used each teams’ finish in pool play to determine the brackets.

All top seeds play in the gold bracket, while the runners-up were in the silver. Third-place teams went to bronze, fourthplace finishers were placed in the copper bracket and the maroon bracket was filled with fifth-place teams. The bottom three brackets played semifinals Friday, with championship and consolation matches taking place Saturday. The silver and gold brackets will play semifinal, third-place and championship matches Saturday.

Mora and West Las Vegas were in the bronze bracket, while Monte del Sol and Desert Academy were in the copper division. Taos and the SFIS junior varsity played in the maroon bracket.

The gold bracket championship will finish the tournament at 4 p.m.