Sometimes getting a star player a little angry is all it takes.
Santa Barbara High’s Eve Ettinger got off to a particularly slow start in Tuesday’s girls volleyball match against Royal, so her coaches decided to let her simmer on the bench for awhile.
It worked.
Ettinger finished with 19 kills as the Dons pulled out a 19-25, 25-22, 25-12, 22-25, 15-11 win over the feisty Highlanders in front of a rowdy crowd at J.R. Richards Gym.
“I didn’t think it was going to work, but I realized how mad I got and started playing up to my potential,” said the 6-1 junior, who has already committed to play for USC.
The defending CIF Division I-A champion Dons may have been caught by surprise in the first set. After all, they had beaten Division I-AA champion Santa Margarita on the road on Saturday. The Highlanders are not ranked at all in the Division I-AA preseason polls, which generally carry little merit and are based on last year’s results.
“In all honesty, I kind of knew ahead of time that they were going to want to beat us more than we were going to want to beat them,” said Santa Barbara coach John Gannon.
Santa Barbara High’s volleyball teams are known for carrying loads of talent, but the Dons are not always the high-energy type of team that boils over with excitement after every point.
“They wanted to prove to themselves that they could take it to us, and I think they really did in the first game. Sometimes with the laid-back Santa Barbara attitude it takes us a little while to get the engine going,” said Gannon.
The Highlanders led 24-14 at one point in the first set before finishing it at 25-19. Santa Barbara had an early 6-3 lead in the second set after two straight aces from Sarah Mendoza, but three missed serves, two net violations and a lift over the next 12 points gave Royal a 12-9 lead.
Dani Rottman nabbed a kill from the back row to tie it up at 14-14 and Kari Garcia followed with a kill at the net to give the Dons the lead, which they would never relinquish. Ettinger came in off the bench about midway through the game and put down three kills down the stretch.
Ettinger had three straight kills early in the third as Santa Barbara (3-0) jumped out to a 13-1 lead and never looked back. The visitors had the hot hand early in the fourth, taking a 9-5 lead, but the Dons battled back and took a 12-10 lead after three unforced errors by the Highlanders (1-1). The set see-sawed all the way to a 21-21 tie before Royal pulled away thanks to the heavy arm-swing of Kathleen Wright, who notched 20 kills in the match. None of them was more emphatic than the set that she detonated on the left side to send the match in to a fifth game.
After a close start that led to a 5-5 deadlock in the fifth, Katy Villanueva put away a set in the middle to give the Dons the last lead they would need.
Katherine Keller had a team-high five blocks in the match while Emily Rottman added eight kills and 15 digs.
Ettinger said that playing a hard-fought match in a loud atmosphere is good for the Dons early in the season.
“I think it’s really going to help our team, especially in big matches like when we play DP,” she said.
Next up for the Dons is a home match on Thursday against Thousand Oaks. First serve is scheduled for 6:30 p.m.
