The Santa Barbara High girls volleyball team made a good Marlborough team look bad in the opening round of the CIF Division I-A playoffs in a 25-13, 25-14, 25-16 sweep of the Sunshine League’s No. 3 team at J.R. Richards Gym on Tuesday night.
“It was good to get that first playoff game out of the way,” said middle blocker Hadley Simmons, whose No. 3-seeded Dons move on to play Estancia — which beat Huntington Beach — at a location to be determined by coinflip on Wednesday.
To be fair, Marlborough wasn’t as bad as it was overwhelmed by Santa Barbara’s relentless attack.
Emily Rottman led the Dons in just about every statistical catergory. The junior outside hitter had eight kills, 19 assists and seven digs. Sophomore Eve Ettinger really got the Dons going, slamming six kills in the first two games. Simmons was also big up at the net, adding two blocks to her four kills. Mimi Cuttrell was there for the balanced effort, recording five kills and two blocks.
“I felt like we all meshed together and we played really well tonight,” Ettinger said after the match, citing a recent dip in production.
Other than wanting a bit more energy from his side, Dons head coach John Gannon was pleased with his team’s showing, especially from the service line. The first game was close until Katherine Keller put some distance between the Dons and Marlborough with six straight points. Jordan Fuller later closed out the first set with three straight.
In the second game, the Dons raced out to a 9-3 lead thanks to two kills each from Rottman and Ettinger, before Claire Woolf put an end to some back-and-forth play with a five-point serving run that helped Santa Barbara close out the set 25-14.
Marlborough got the first two points of the third frame before Madison Hamilton’s running kill got the Dons untracked. Cuttrell, Ettinger, Simmons, Rottman and Natalie Guerra all had their hands in run that put Santa Barbara up 17-7.
Gannon infused some of his fresher players mid-way through the third game. Rose Lewis and Jessica Ullmeyer came on to help close the match out, stopping a mini-run that closed the game to 17-12 before the Dons regrouped.
The Dons’ match against Estancia, the Orange Coast League’s No. 2 team, is slated for Thursday.
