By: Hanna Proctor
Staff Writer
The Mira Costa girls’ volleyball team suffered their first and only loss in their final Bay League match of the year to Redondo Union High School on Nov. 1 at Redondo, bringing their Bay League record 7-1. Although they lost one match, their record was so successful that Costa was declared the Bay League champion.
Despite winning the first two games of the match, Mira Costa ended up losing the last three games, and the match as a whole, of their final regular season match. The Mustangs won both of the first two games 25-23, but lost the last three 25-15, 25-17, and 15-8.
“We barely survived the first two games,” coach Nancy Reynolds said. “We came out strong and Redondo’s level of playing didn’t change throughout the match, but they served better than us and that hurt us.”
The team played an uptempo game during the first half of the match, but after losing the first eight points of the third game, the team lost the momentum needed to complete their second victory over Redondo. They were unable to bounce back during the third game after their early struggles and lost by ten points.
“Once we started questioning our ability, we stopped playing as well as we had been,” coach Lisa Zimmerman said. “It’s a real bummer because they really wanted to beat Redondo again. But it was great to know that we beat Peninsula twice and we got to beat Redondo once.”
The fourth game was closely contested as both teams, swapped the lead back and forth until the Sea Hawks put together a long winning streak. The streak demoralized the Mustangs and propelled Redondo Union toward a win. The Mustangs tried to make a comeback, but were too emotionally drained after having so many matches so close together.
“We just got a little complacent and our passing was really off, which hasn’t happened almost all season,” Zimmerman said. “We gave Redondo too much momentum and they played really consistently. We lost energy and we were pretty tired from our weekend tournament.”
The Mustangs had already won once against the Redondo Sea Hawks early in the season, and were hoping for a repeat performance and uphold their undefeated Bay League record, but they remain proud of their accomplishment in winning the Bay League Championship.
“It feels great to win Bay League,” Zimmerman said. “It was a great accomplishment that we had really hoped for and we’ll still have that victory when we go into CIF.”
Although the Mustangs succeeded in winning Bay League, they cannot celebrate for long because they must now turn their attention on the competition at CIF. Mira Costa is now ranked 17th in California, recently moving up four rankings. The Mustangs have also moved up 25 rankings nationally, now standing in the 55th spot.
“It was definitely one of the goals that we wanted to accomplish,” Reynolds said. “That’s huge. We’ve been on a good run and now we need to focus on CIF being our next goal and hopefully we will be just as successful there.”
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