Girls’ Volleyball: Sage thumped by heralded Santa Margarita
The Sage Hill School girls’ volleyball team missed Santa Margarita at the Dave Mohs Memorial Championships. The three-day tournament wrapped up on Monday, with Santa Margarita winning the Division 1 title.
A day later, the Lightning saw the Eagles. Sage Hill played host to Santa Margarita in a nonleague match. The contest started early and it ended in the same fashion.
The Eagles swept the defending CIF Southern Section Division 3AA champion, 25-16, 25-21, 25-17, on Tuesday. They improved to 10-0 on the season.
No team has come close to topping Santa Margarita, ranked No. 5 in the country by MaxPreps.com. The Eagles have only dropped two sets, both coming at Dave Mohs, in which it won seven matches.
Sage Hill wasn’t as successful at the tournament, winning once in five matches.
Sage Hill, which has started the season 1-5, looks to regroup Tuesday, when it begins Academy League play. The program won each of its 12 league matches last season en route to its first outright league title.
The opener is going to be a battle, as the Lightning travel to rival St. Margaret’s. The top two schools in the Division 3AA poll played for it all in last year’s section finale, with Sage Hill winning in four sets.
Sage Hill Coach Dan Thomassen hopes playing the likes of Santa Margarita and Corona Santiago, last year’s Division 1A runner-up, early on bodes well for the Lightning in defending league and section titles.
“They had a bigger match last night,” Thomassen said of the Eagles. “We knew that they were going to come in and still be, if not the best team in Orange County, one of the very top [teams], and one of the best in the state, and one of the best in the country. They’re an amazing team.
“This is our first [best-of-five] match. Our first competitions were [Friday and Saturday]. I feel like we’re playing a little catch up.”
Life without Kekai Whitford, Halland McKenna and Maddy Abbott, three players instrumental to Sage Hill claiming three section titles in the last four years, has begun for the Lightning.
Jamie Dailey, a junior, led Sage Hill with 14 kills and two service aces. Jade Blevins, a sophomore setter, finished with 24 assists.
Thomassen played two freshmen — Amiyah De’Long and Sydnee Francis — a lot against Santa Margarita, ranked No. 8 in Division 1AA. The two performed well in spurts, De’Long recorded six kills and an ace, while Francis kept Sage Hill in it in the third set with a kill and ace.
After Francis’ ace made it 16-16, Santa Margarita opposite Sarah Ciszek broke the tie in Game 3. She hammered home one of her seven kills and Santa Margarita closed out the match on a 9-1 run. Haley Carmo led the Eagles with nine kills, followed up by Meghan McClure’s eight kills.
“I think we actually did pretty well,” Santa Margarita Coach Katy Daly said of how her players responded after beating Santiago, 25-13, 19-25, 15-5, in the Dave Mohs finale the night before. “I told them the three months in season [is] not an easy road. But, you know, I liked [Sage Hill’s] little crowd and it kind of put a little pressure on us.”
Twitter: @ByDCP
