Success was not supposed to come quite so quickly for the Live
Oak High girls volleyball team. In fact, according to head coach
Laura Coleman, it wasn
’t even supposed to come this season at all.
Success was not supposed to come quite so quickly for the Live Oak High girls volleyball team. In fact, according to head coach Laura Coleman, it wasn’t even supposed to come this season at all.
But there the Acorns were last week, competing in the Northern California State Division I girls volleyball playoffs — a huge accomplishment considering the underclassmen-dominated team finished below .500 in league and barely made the section playoffs. In fact, the NorCal playoff appearance was so unexpected that even a first-round loss to host Liberty High by scores of 18-25, 25-23, 25-19, 13-25, 15-12 on Tuesday, Nov. 25 couldn’t dampen the enthusiasm Live Oak’s postseason run engendered.
“I’m so proud of this team,” Coleman said. “Obviously, (making it to the NorCal playoffs) was a surprise. We were just an average team with a lot of younger players. Then, we just kind of like peaked at the right time.”
For Coleman, it was the first time she had coached the Live Oak girls volleyball program past the second round of the Central Coast Section playoffs in her nine seasons with the Acorns and her first trip to the NorCal playoffs since coaching at Leland.
And, she said she never saw it coming.
Live Oak came into the season with just four seniors on the squad, including one returning senior starter, team captain Kaycee Dowdle who was asked to switch positions, and a brand-new setter in senior Justine Pingue. The rest of the team consisted of five juniors and three sophomores.
And, the mix was hardly a recipe for success for most of the season as Live Oak remained mired in the middle of the pack in the Tri-County Athletic League and lost five of six matches during one late-season stretch.
In fact, Coleman admits that late in the season she started looking ahead to next season, especially with a host of underclassmen coming back.
“I was trying a different bloomin’ lineup every game and I couldn’t find the right combo,” Coleman said.
But Coleman said she saw signs of the Acorns beginning to click in the last week of the regular season.
A strong performance in the Milpitas tournament, then a narrow loss to Notre Dame-Salinas in TCAL play preceded a gargantuan effort against Gilroy that got the Acorns into CCS postseason play. It was Gilroy’s final home game of the season — Senior Night — and the Mustang fans were out in force. Live Oak won in four games, a crucial victory for its postseason hopes.
But at 18-15 overall and 4-6 in league, Live Oak was not expected to do much in postseason and only qualified for CCS on points because of a tough schedule. With the No. 6 seed, Live Oak was the fourth, and lowest-seeded, team from the TCAL to make the section playoffs.
But with no expectations weighing them down, the Acorns turned it on in the postseason, playing fast and loose on the way to victories over No. 4 seed Milpitas and No. 1 seed Salinas to make the CCS Division I championship match.
The real shocker was the victory over the top-seeded Cowboys, the TCAL champion and rival that had defeated Live Oak twice during the regular season. But the CCS semifinals were a different story as Live Oak blasted Salinas in four games to advance.
“We beat Milpitas in five (games) earlier in the season so that match could have gone either way,” Coleman said. “When we played Salinas, the team wasn’t nervous because we didn’t expect to win.”
But win the Acorns did, then took No. 3 Piedmont Hills to five games in the CCS finale before falling.
By making the CCS finals, the Acorns qualified for the NorCal playoffs, where they met Liberty and again took the higher-seeded team to five games before losing. Junior Juliette Bowers led Live Oak with 17 kills, senior Sarah Lusenti added 11 kills, and senior Whitney Phares had five aces.
Coleman said the team’s performance in the pressure-packed atmos-phere of the NorCal playoffs was outstanding, especially after having to drive for two and a half hours to Brentwood.
“To not fall apart under pressure, even though they’re young, shows their character,” Coleman said. “They played just like in CCS.”
Coleman said several players had breakthrough seasons for Live Oak to lead the late-season surge. Bowers continued to establish herself as a force in the middle, and junior Tiven Catrett and Lusenti both provided a much-needed complement to Bowers’ play at the net for the Acorns.
In addition, first-year setter Justine Pingue, a senior, came through big-time for Live Oak, allowing the team to run its fast-paced offense. Coleman called Pingue’s play the “biggest improvement” of the season.
Other players who had stand-out seasons included senior Whitney Phares and sophomore Kristen Russ.
But Coleman said the most remarkable aspect of the Acorns‚ season was the players’ attitudes.
“These guys were just hilarious,” she said. “They worked their butts off in practice but they kept it light, they kept things fun. We had a blast.”
