Nov. 7--The Drake High girls volleyball team had a few obstacles to overcome Friday night in the MCAL tournament championship. First, there was the fact that the Pirates had lost to Redwood twice during the MCAL regular season. Then there was the not-so-small inconvenience of having to overcome an illness that had ravaged the team for about a week.
In the end, none of that mattered as the second-seeded Pirates (29-4) showed more than a little moxie in taking down the top-seeded Giants 16-25, 25-20, 25-23,26-24 in Larkspur.
"We were confident that we could play with them," said Drake's Katie Quinn. "Even though we lost to them in the regular season, we felt that we could come back, it didn't matter. I had confidence in my team the whole time. I knew we could do it."
Drake -- which beat Redwood early in the season in a tournament in Santa Rosa -- actually burst to a 10-3 lead in Game 1 on Friday, but the Giants battled back to tie it at 12-12 before a series of kills by Kat Gueth and Lizzie Ahern helped them pull away. But Redwood (24-6) never again got as far as game point, with Drake's defense retrieving ball after ball in the next three games. The final point of the match came when Gueth (22 kills) had her first hitting error, pounding the ball into the net -- in part because of the Drake defense provided by Quinn.
"The singular hitting error was the last ball," said Gueth, shaking her head. "I know that in three years, I'm going to be in college and it's going to be like,
'That last ball.' It's going to haunt me forever. I went up and I saw Katie and I went for the kill. I don't know, either I was off or the ball was low. Destiny just wasn't with us."
Quinn was part of the Drake defensive formula which called for challenging the Redwood hitters at the net, then dropping a player behind the block to defense tips and dinks. The game plan worked.
"The very first day of practice, I told them our offense was not going to be an issue for us," Drake coach Neil
Davidson said. "Our offense was going to happen naturally because of the players that we have. The challenge was going to be how well we play defense throughout the course of the year. And when we played Branson (on Thursday) we made a defensive switch and it ended out working well. And it carried over tonight."
To be fair, the Drake offense worked just fine, too. In addition to Lexie Parker's team-high 16 kills, Erin Freeman added 14 kills and Hannah Stoner had 27 assists. Those efforts made the team-wide illness a non-factor.
"We all were pretty much sick," Freeman said. "It was rough go. But I think that the momentum that we have gained throughout the entire season kind of made the fact that we didn't have practices and were kind
of sick not matter. ... We just kept to our game."
"Our coach really wanted to focus on playing our hardest and going after every ball," Parker said. "If we did that it would be really hard to stop us. And I think tonight that finally clicked. Once we started making those hustle plays, our offense took care of the rest."
For Redwood, the loss in the tournament final was its second in two years. And though the Giants will get an MCAL pennant after winning the regular-season title, senior Ursula Kunhardt said the loss Friday was difficult to handle.
"We wanted it so bad that I think that it got in our heads a little too much," Kunhardt said. "But we worked so hard with all our hearts and I couldn't have asked for a better team. ... We wanted it so bad."
Both teams are expected to be top-four seeds in the North Coast Section playoffs. The seeds and opponents will be announced on Sunday.
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