WATSONVILLE >> The Clear Lake High School volleyball team came up a few points shy of reaching the Northern California Division V championship game but did extend the No. 3-seeded Mt. Madonna squad to the limit before the Hawks prevailed 16-25, 25-13, 25-13, 19-25, 15-12 on Tuesday night in Watsonville.
“They played great, I’m proud of the girls,” Clear Lake coach Marci Psalmonds said while beginning her nearly 4 1/2-hour ride home to Lakeport. “We played a great first game, really stunk it up the next two games, but came back and played great in the fourth and fifth sets. It could have gone either way.”
Clear Lake (29-7), the North Central League I co-champion this season and a quarterfinal-round loser to Berean Christian of Walnut Creek in the North Coast Section playoffs, earned a second postseason life by securing an at-large berth in the NorCal playoffs. The seventh-seeded Cardinals made the most of it too by beating East Nicolaus in straight sets and Northern Section champion Durham, the No. 2 seed, in four sets to reach the semifinal round. A win on Tuesday would have put Clear Lake into the NorCal championship match on Saturday against No. 1 seed San Marin, which swept Berean Christian in straight sets in the other semifinal played Tuesday.
“It would have been nice,” Psalmonds said of a NorCal finals berth. “But the girls still had a great season.”
Facing a Mt. Madonna team that was similar to Clear Lake in terms of its powerful attack up front, the Cardinals had their hands full on defense. Shaelyn McIntire and Camille Donald each had 10 digs.
“We hit some balls at them that I don’t know how they dug up,” Psalmonds said.
A breakdown in Clear Lake’s passing game allowed Mt. Madonna to win the second and third sets, according to Psalmonds.
Between the third and fourth sets, Psalmonds offered her players some advice.
“I told them they needed to relax,” she said. “I told them that I know we have to play hard, I told them that I know we want to win, but you’ve also got to play because you love the game. We needed to play like we do in practice, relaxed and having fun.”
The Cardinals responded and battled back to tie the match at two sets-all. Mt. Madonna was on the verge of winning the match with a 14-9 lead in the fifth set when Clear Lake rallied for three straight points to make it 14-12, which is as close as the Cardinals would get.
“We could have just quit after that third set,” Psalmonds said. “We made it a good ending instead of what could have been a pretty bad one had we lost that fourth set.”
Kiana Richardson, co-most valuable player in the NCL I this season, led the Clear Lake offense with 15 kills. Donald added nine more while Corin Alakszay and Valerie Hutton finished with six kills apiece. Alakszay led the team with four blocks and Hutton had two. Setter Kylie Udy, ranked among the state’s leaders in assists, added 29 more to her final tally for 2017.
