The calendar still reads September, but the atmosphere inside the Los Alamitos gym Tuesday night screamed CIF-SS Division 1AA playoffs.
“I’m glad (Los Alamitos coach) Dave (Huber) wanted to schedule us,” Mater Dei coach Dan O’Dell said. “I knew it was going to be a hostile environment and I knew they would challenge us.
“I knew they would be amped up, so you can play a great team in front of a really big crowd and try to fight through.”
That’s exactly what the sixth-ranked Monarchs did, edging the fourth-ranked Griffins, 25-17, 22-25, 25-23, 25-22, in a nonleague match.
“At times we served tough and at times we didn’t,” O’Dell said. “When Los Alamitos is in system, their setter (Julia Patterson) is so good, she just opens up the court for everybody and it is really hard to stop them when they’re passing.
“So the biggest thing was when we served them a little tougher and got them out of system, and we did that at the very end of game three when we won on like a four-point run to close.”
The late stages of the third set proved to be one of the keys in the match. Mater Dei trailed for the majority of the set, including 22-19, but found a way to steal the victory and take momentum into the fourth set.
Shannon Scully and Rachel Ritchie led the Monarchs (7-2) with 12 kills. Makena Martin added 11.
“I thought in the third set, we let the crowd get to us a little bit,” Scully said. “In the fourth, we were fired up because we didn’t want to go to five and we knew how hard we’ve worked.”
Los Alamitos (11-8) trailed throughout the early stages of the fourth set, but rallied to take a 16-14 lead on a kill from Sarah Tuioti-Mariner and a net violation on Mater Dei.
With the score tied at 18, Mater Dei scored three consecutive points to take the lead for good.
Tuioti-Mariner led the Griffins with 15 kills.
“We didn’t play our best volleyball and still had a chance. We can take something from that, that we’ve gotten better to the point where we’re in those games when we don’t have our best,” Huber said. “But it means we still have to keep working.”
In other nonleague matches:
No. 1 Santa Margarita 3, Marymount 0: Meghan McClure and Jackie Ghindia had nine kills apiece to lead the visiting Eagles (19-1) in the road victory, 25-23, 25-17, 25-21.
Laguna Beach 3, Newport Harbor 1: Cameron Dorn led the visiting Breakers (8-10) with 15 kills and Katelyn Carballo added 10 in the 25-20, 17-25, 28-26, 25-19 victory.
No. 10 Orange Lutheran 3, No. 7 Edison 0: Kaylie Milton had 16 kills and Olivia Root had 13 to lead the host Lancers (19-4) to the 25-20, 26-24, 26-20 home victory. Julia Frederick led Orange Lutheran with 21 digs.
Contact the writer: dcalhoun@ocregister.com
