Chargers finish off close sets against Dons

This one came down to finishing.

The first, second and fourth sets all had tie scores of 23-23 in Tuesday night’s girls volleyball match between Santa Barbara High and Dos Pueblos at Sovine Gym. The host Chargers did the better job finishing, pulling out a 27-25, 25-23, 13-25, 27-25 victory to all but guarantee a third consecutive Channel League title.

Taylor Racich cranked out 21 kills and her twin sister Tristan dished out 43 assists for the Chargers, who became a bit more seasoned after last weekend’s third-place finish at the California Challenge in San Diego. DP engaged in a host of tight battles in the tourney, pulling out wins against perennial powers Mira Costa and Archbishop Mitty.

“The theme of our whole weekend was fighting through every point and being gritty… Down the stretch of game four, especially, our girls fought for every single point,” said assistant coach Jacky Yao.

The Dons were led by 16 kills from Eve Ettinger and 22 digs from Lauren Capritto.

Tristan Racich sent a perfect back set to her sister with the score at 23-23 in the fourth game, and Taylor promptly crushed it down the line to force match point. A Chargers hitting error tied the score up again, however, and a 45-second marathon rally ensued. Dani Rottman won the point for the Dons with a kill from the left side, but Ciena Colburn responded with a Charger kill in the middle to tie it at 25-25.

Racich followed with another right-side kills and Nicki Brown ended the match with a missile on the left to send the big crowd crazy.

“Every game that we lost was a two-point game. They kind of executed down at the end, and we just got stuck in some rotations down at the end of games,” said Santa Barbara coach John Gannon. “All credit goes to DP… This is one of the best defensive teams I’ve seen at Dos Pueblos in five years.”

Katie Spieler led the digging effort for the victors with 12, while Brown had eight and Jordan Roberts added seven. Brown also had 11 kills and Amanda Moriarty had eight.

The Chargers (15-2, 6-0), who won the CIF title and went undefeated in league play last year, have two league matches left in early November against San Marcos and Buena. They need to win one of those to clinch their third consecutive crown. Next up, however, is a home match against Thousand Oaks on Friday.

Santa Barbara (15-8, 5-2) plays at Royal on Monday.