What seemed like a foregone conclusion, became interesting very quickly for the Beckman girls volleyball team.
After regrouping to force a deciding fifth set in Thursday’s Pacific Coast League opener at Woodbridge, the Patriots carried their newfound momentum into the final set and arrived at set point with a five-point lead.
Then four and three-point lead, forcing coach Darin McBain to call a timeout. After the break, the lead continued to shrink, finally getting to 14-13.
After another timeout, Beckman (10-6, 1-0) was eventually able to exhale and celebrate the 25-20, 23-25, 18-25, 25-16, 15-13 over ninth-ranked Woodbridge (13-3, 0-1).
“I knew we had it all along,” a relieved McBain joked. “(No) This is huge for these girls. We knew that this was going to be one of our toughest opponents in league and to start league with a win, against a team like that, is huge. Sets us up pretty nicely and if we can keep our eyes looking forward, set our goals high, I think we can do it.”
The Warriors were able to bounce back from the first set to tie and then had a late run to seal the third set. At one point, the third set was tied 16-16. The Warriors closed on a 9-2 run.
McBain made a big adjustment in the fourth set, notably to try and slow down Woodbridge’s dynamic attacker Mima Mirkovic.
“At the beginning of that game four, she (Mirkovic) made a couple of hitting errors, we got a block or two and then you could see the wheels kind of come off on that side,” he said. “For us, it is keeping the foot on the gas. We like to relax a little bit sometimes, but once we got lead in the game four, we outplayed them the rest of the way.”
Mirkovic led the Warriors with 20 kills.
“The key for us was our best player Jill (Schneggenburger), moving her out and she just followed Mima wherever she went and we were able to get a couple of blocks and slow her down just a little bit,” McBain.
Jill Schneggenburger led the Patriots with 27. Her sister Hannah and Bella Coats contributed with nine and eight, respectively, out of the middle.
“I thought our passing helped us turn it around,” Schneggenburger said. “We were just going crazy, we just hit every ball like we can, passed every ball … this was huge for us.”
The teams will meet again Oct. 11 at Beckman.
Also in the Pacific Coast League
Corona del Mar 3, Northwood 1: Ashley Humphreys had 17 kills, 19 assists and 12 digs and Christine Davenport had 15 kills to lead the Sea Kings (5-5, 1-0) to a 22-25, 25-14, 25-19, 25-11 road victory.
Alexa Bonanno had eight kills, five aces, 34 assists and 15 digs for CdM.
