Sophomore Melanie Moore
On Oct. 13, Aragon’s girls volleyball team hosted its second annual varsity volleyball tournament and placed second out of eleven participating teams. Extending from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., the single-day event featured an abundance of passes, sets and hits on behalf of the various teams. In the end, the Notre Dame-Belmont Tigers were celebrated on the first place pedestal after emerging victorious against the Lady Dons in the championship round.
To start, the Lady Dons won their morning pool by defeating Tamalpais 25-9, 25-19, and South San Francisco 25-19, 25-14, advancing them to semifinals where they faced off against the Mills Vikings. In a tightly contested three-set match, Aragon prevailed 25-13, 25-27, 15-8. Sophomore setter Regan Castillo served five in a row in the beginning of the third set, giving the Dons a 6-0 lead, and senior Gilliana Lau finished with a second ball kill to end the match.
Subsequently, the following match placed the Lady Dons against the number 32 ranked Tigers in the state according to Maxpreps.com, in the championship round. The first set was filled with a number of costly, unforced errors on behalf of Aragon, but the following half was a different story, with longer and more competitive rallies. In the end, the Lady Dons fell to the Tigers in straight sets 25-13, 25-20, which placed them second in the tournament.
Senior Stephanie Mao says. “[The coaches] weren’t really angry. They knew that in the first set we had struggled with our own unforced errors and that we needed to calm down and settle. [Notre Dame-Belmont] came into the tournament undefeated overall and in their league and I think we may have went into the match nervous. Our coaches simply tried to calm our nerves down and encouraged us to play our game.”
Co-tournament director Annette Gennaro says, “Last year, it was kind of based on whoever signed up. This year, I re-invited the teams that came last year, and then there [weren’t] enough, so I put it on different websites, like CCS.”
With respect to the tournament bracket, the eleven teams were sorted into three pools, where the top teams would advance to the gold bracket, while the bottom teams competed in the silver bracket. This year, after a team dropped out late, the pools became uneven and left four teams in two pools and only three teams in the last one. Gennaro says, “[The tournament] went really well. The only thing that I would change is to have twelve teams so I could have three pools [of four teams].”
Overall, aside from their silver-medal performance, the tournament also revealed several key areas of improvement that could be implemented as the season progresses. Mao says, “Ideally, we’d get more evenly matched teams next year. Especially this year, we’re demolishing the other teams in the Ocean division, so we’ve been relying on tournaments to play more challenging teams and really play at our best level. So of course we’d like more evenly matched teams, or even better teams, like [Notre Dame-Belmont], because at least we’re facing a challenge and we get to play at a level I know we’re capable of.”
The Lady Dons will hope to add to their 21-4 overall record on Oct. 15 against San Mateo at home at 6:15 p.m.
