Thursday night, the Live Oak girls volleyball team upset the No.
1-ranked Salinas 25-23, 19-25, 25-21, 25-22 to move on to the CCS
Division I finals on Saturday at 4 p.m. at West Valley College.
David vs. Goliath.
The 1980 United States Hockey team vs. Russia.
Live Oak vs. Salinas.
All three were underdogs; all three won when they weren’t supposed to.
Thursday night, the Live Oak girls volleyball team upset the No. 1-ranked Salinas 25-23, 19-25, 25-21, 25-22 to move on to the CCS Division I finals on Saturday at 4 p.m. at West Valley College.
For the entire season, the girls had not defeated Salinas in the two times they met.
“We knew if we played well, we could beat them,” Acorn junior Tiven Catrett said.
Indeed, the Acorns played very well and managed to keep their mistakes down, which constantly plagued them in the previous matches against Salinas.
“I looked back at the tapes and told the girls the reason they lost the games was because of unforced errors,” Acorn Head Coach Laura Coleman said. “We had a few errors in this game, but we would commit them (and) then stop.”
Both sides played a very tough game, and there were many examples of strong efforts on both sides to keep rallies alive.
In the end, it was Salinas that committed one too many errors that swung the game.
The first game saw the Acorns fight a see-saw battle where the momentum continually switched, but the girls pulled it off.
Salinas came out strong in the second game and was able to keep control the whole way.
The last two games were nail-biters. In the third game, Live Oak was ahead nearly the entire way, but on a few occasions they let things slip. At one point, Salinas was able to tie the score, but Live Oak was able to answer the threat and pulled off the victory to take a 2-1 lead.
In the final game, the girls fell behind after another back-and-forth start. The Acorns fought hard and swung the momentum their way, taking a three-point lead before Salinas was able to counter.
It was an adrenaline-filled contest where momentum swung like a pendulum and neither team seemed to have a clear advantage. The Cowboys took the lead for a brief time, and it seemed like they would force a Game 5.
Then, the mistakes came as Salinas just seemed to fall apart and Live Oak capitalized.
Still the tension was high as Live Oak inched closer to the prize.
Then it happened. On a serve by Live Oak senior Sarah Lusenti, Salinas could not keep the ball in the court and the Acorns just watched the ball drop out of bounds, giving them the magical 25th point in the fourth, and final, game.
“It was really cool,” Acorn junior Juliette Bowers said. “We had our ups and downs and things just started going up.”
In the CCS final, Live Oak will play the winner of Thursday night’s other semifinal between No. 2 Piedmont Hills and No. 3 Santa Teresa.
Whoever the Acorns face, they will play a team that is comparable to themselves, according to Coleman. Santa Teresa was 16-13 overall going into Thursday’s match against Piedmont Hills (18-10 overall).
“Whoever we play will just be icing on the cake,” Coleman said. “Salinas was the cake and Saturday will be the icing. We can beat them just as easily as they can beat us.”
