A valiant comeback by the St. Patrick-St. Vincent High girls varsity volleyball team fell a little short last Thursday in a 25-21, 26-24, 18-25, 20-25, 15-13 loss to visiting Justin-Siena.
The match was a rematch of last year’s North Coast Section Division IV championship game, with Justin-Siena won in four sets. SPSV had a seven-point lead in the fifth set Thursday but couldn’t close out the Lady Braves.
“We started off slow, but after losing the first two sets, we started pulling things out and got to that fifth set,” said SPSV head coach Danette Domecus. “We just couldn’t finish it off.”
The Lady Bruins led 11-9 in that decisive fifth set when their serving abandoned them. Three serves into the net helped Justin-Siena (2-0) come back for a 14-13 lead, and match point occurred when SPSV (2-2) was called for running into the negating a set-tying kill.
“It was close and a really fun game,” Domecus said. “Our girls came back and showed that they had some backbone after losing the first two sets.”
Malia Bolko led SPSV with 19 kills, 20 digs and three aces. Julia Kistner had 27 digs and three assists, while Nikki Lumauod had 20 assists and 19 digs. Other standouts for SPSV included Kristina Manuel (19 assists, nine digs), Halle Webster (10 kills, seven blocks), Isabel Villalobos (eight kills) and Taylor Castro (seven kills).
“We showed some good stuff for the future,” Domecus said. “We just have to not give points away in matches that are going to be tough.”
The Lady Bruins play at Berkeley on Tuesday.