Down 2-1 against Milpitas Wednesday, the Los Altos girls volleyball team won two straight sets to seal the win, punctuated with a thunderous final kill in the fifth set from outside hitter Aviya Russo.
“It was game point, and everybody said, ‘just rip it; last ball,’ so I think that was the mentality,” Russo said.
Los Altos head coach Peter Kim credits the team’s mentality in the fourth and fifth sets for helping turn around the deficit to win 3-2, noting his young team didn’t play well in the second and third sets but focused in later in the match. Los Altos has several new key contributors in freshman right-side hitter Kat Minkevich, freshman setter Angela Deng and sophomore outside hitter Mila Wong playing in their first Santa Clara Valley Athletic League De Anza Division league match of the year.
“So, half the team on the court is basically either a freshman or a new starter,” Kim said.
While the season has just begun, Kim expects improvements as the season progresses and they play together more.
“It’s still a process right now, trying to get them all basically working together as a team,” Kim said. “Some people are doing one thing and then some people are doing other things, so that’s something we have to do as a coaching staff to get them better.”
The Eagles will look to seniors Ella McFarlane, Ana Heath and Aviya Russo to lead the team, with Heath a consistent presence with her passing and defense and McFarlane a dynamic force in the front row. Russo, an outside hitter, finished with a team-leading 21 kills and believes the Eagles will continue to get better as the season progresses.
“I think we are a very new team from last year, so just building those connections, making sure we know who’s going for what ball and building that synergy,” Russo said.
Los Altos (7-4) opened the match with a 25-17 first-set win thanks to six kills in the set from Russo. Milpitas (7-2) followed with wins in sets two and three (25-19, 25-17) before Los Altos won the fourth and fifth sets (25-18, 15-7) by going on early runs at the beginning of the sets to build the advantage.
“I think we talked about starting strong,” Russo said. “I think it’s really hard to come back when the set’s really short if you’re down, so we started talking about pushing that beginning and continuing to go on.”
Kim noted that while the teams passing and serving were good, the defense had to improve in order to fight for the SCVAL De Anza Division title, given the back-and-forth nature of the game.
“I think we also need to work on quite a bit of stuff like back row defense,” Kim said. “That’s an ongoing thing – they tend to like freelancing it too much, move around too much and get caught out of position. We need to work on having them be disciplined, be there, read, and then react, not react, and then I’m out of position now.”
Los Altos’ next league game is away against Homestead 6:45 p.m. Monday.
