A controversial call in the fifth set shut down the Laguna Blanca Owls, who fell 25-21, 25-27, 20-25, 25-22, 17-15 Tuesday in the first round of the Division IV Girls Volleyball State Tournament at Central Valley Christian in Visalia.
With the score tied at 15 in the final game, Laguna Blanca sophomore Amanda Harvey made a diving dig and her sister, senior Jackie Harvey, promptly blasted the ball from the left side. The Owls though it had ricocheted off of a Cavaliers player.
“I couldn’t see it myself, but apparently most people in the gym had thought it hit her,” said Owls (21-3) coach Jim Alzina. “The line judge had to dive out of the way and had his head turned the other way but he called it out.”
The Cavaliers then got a serve that hit the top of the net and trickled over for a match-winning ace.
“We were just in shock after that,” said Harvey, who collected 27 kills with 14 digs in the match while Heidi van den Oever had 13 and Jessie Ditmore added 10. Lillie Hodges had 14 digs as well.
“This was one of the most fun matches we’ve played all year, because we hadn’t gone to five games before and there were just a lot of great plays,” said Alzina, who didn’t seem too bothered by the tough call.
“They had about 1,000 fans there and we had about four, but about 900 of their fans came up and shook my hand and said ‘nice game’ afterwards. They were very nice,” he said.
Both the coach and his star player felt that the season exceeded all expectations. The Owls went 20-1 on the regular season and took the sixth seed in Division IV-AA all the way to the finals, where they lost to a stellar team from Whittier Christian.
“This was a great season, and it was the best team I’ve been on in my four years here,” said Harvey, who won a CIF-SS title with the Owls as a freshman in 2006.
Alzina said that “adaptability” was one of the qualities that this year’s squad exuded.
“We changed our lineup lots of times and they never seemed fazed by it. We had a lot of new players to mix in and they gelled real well with the senior leadership,” he said.
