Have it play wherever you want, the Sobrato High volleyball team
is still going to go out and win you a match.
Have it play wherever you want, the Sobrato High volleyball team is still going to go out and win you a match.
When the Bulldogs tip off tonight against Del Mar at Gavilan College, it will mark the sixth different location that Sobrato has played a “home” match.
The Bulldogs opened the season with a couple of matches at its own gym, but that has since been closed for repairs. In the meantime, Sobrato has played “home” matches at Britton Middle School, the small and main gyms at Live Oak and Wednesday it took the court at the Centennial Recreation Center.
All the while, the Bulldogs are 9-0 and in first place in the Blossom Valley Athletic League West Valley Division and a win tonight over second-place Del Mar would give them a three-game lead over the Dons with four matches to play.
“It’s just pretty crazy never knowing where we’re going to play, but it seems like wherever we go we know what needs to be done,” senior co-captain Jordyn Hanne said. “We don’t focus on that too much, we focus on how we play. It’s nice to show that no matter what we get put under we can still come through and play strong.”
If Sobrato wins tonight, it has a chance to clinch the league title when it faces Oak Grove on Tuesday. The Eagles enter their match tonight against Pioneer with a 7-2 record and would need a win over the Bulldogs to stay in contention for the BVAL crown.
“Every practice, all I do is tell the girls to focus and we take one game at a time, one practice at a time. We don’t look ahead,” head coach Rosemary Miller said. “The chaos we’re in, I don’t need anymore chaos.”
Being in position to bring home a league championship banner to the young school that has never won one has the team excited.
“We’re setting traditions here,” Hanne said. “We might be taking home the first banner for our school.”
Wednesday’s match against Gunderson at the Centennial Recreation Center presented probably the most difficult situation for Sobrato. The match was played with the gym split in half by a partition and with only a few rows of bleachers. The non-conventional set up caused some confusion.
“I don’t think it’s been hard at all until this game, because there’s so many lines and we had some problems,” sophomore co-captain Laura Billos said. “But we still pulled through and won.”
The multiplicity of “home” locations has also denied the team the opportunity to get a true home-court advantage and their success hasn’t had as many spectators as the team would like.
“It kind of sucks because we don’t get a big crowd,” Billos said. “But I don’t think we’re worried about that right now. No one’s even thinking about that, we just want to get through every game.”
