Costa Mesa girls’ volleyball ‘beat every expectation’ with run to CIF quarterfinals
Costa Mesa pulled out two seesaw battles to overcome an early deficit in a CIF Southern Section girls’ volleyball quarterfinal showdown, then found itself in a fight to survive without its most vital contributor.
It was a task too tall for the Mustangs, who dropped Wednesday evening’s five-set thriller to Oak Hills, watching a fifth-set lead disappear once senior outside hitter Aubrey Spallone was forced to the sidelines.
The visiting Bulldogs, from the Victor Valley, took advantage, going on a 13-2 run to complete a 25-22, 23-25, 23-25, 25-16, 15-8 victory and advance to a Division 6 semifinal Saturday at home against top-seeded South Pasadena.
Spallone aggravated a knee injury, suffered in the playoff opener for Costa Mesa (20-12), on the last play of the fourth set. She received treatment, at first on the court, then limped uneasily into position for the decisive set. The Mustangs took a 6-2 lead, behind Anusuya Guragain’s sixth and seventh aces, and Spallone didn’t return from a timeout by Oak Hills (16-7).
The fifth-seeded Bulldogs, powered in the set by five of Sacramento State-bound pin hitter Keonahi’ilani Solaita’s 19 kills — scored the next six points, four of the following five, and then the final three, and Costa Mesa’s season was over.
“I popped my knee out in the first round of CIF, so it’s been hurting, and that was just, like, it’s last show,” said Spallone, who returned for her turn to serve near the end but struggled to move. “That was hard [to not be able to be out there]. That was hard. I think that was the worst.”
It was an unfortunate finish to a tight clash in which the Mustangs nearly made up an early deficit in the first set, scored the final three points in the second — on kills by Spallone and Lucca Miller and a Guragain ace — and, from Oak Hills errors, the last two in the third, then succumbed to three big Bulldogs runs in the fourth.
“It hurt to have lost her, but I’m still proud of how the girls performed ...,” first-year Costa Mesa head coach Jacob Lee said. “Normally, I would be super upset [to lose at this stage], but the way we performed all season, I can’t be mad at how things ended. We beat every expectation.”
Spallone, with limited movement from the start, delivered eight kills, two blocks and two aces.
“I couldn’t hit. The whole game, my hitting was off,” she said. “That was the missing piece.”
Costa Mesa served 18 aces — court leader Isabel Ortega-Davidson contributed four, to go with 11 kills and 19 assists; Gracie Glass had three; and Brooke Mehanna a pair, along with 15 assists — but made 17 service errors, eight of them in the opening set. Seven misses on 11 serves helped Oak Hills turn a three-point deficit into a five-point lead.
The Bulldogs were more efficient in their serve-and-pass game — “That’s what volleyball boils down to,” Lee said — and feasted on Solaita’s dominance all over the court, middle blocker Jaliyah Reese’s success (six kills, two blocks) over the final three and a half sets, and eight aces (three by Savannah Rivera).
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