La Verne sweeps by Whits
Three years ago, Whitworth defeated defending NCAA Division III volleyball champion La Verne at Whitworth Fieldhouse on its way to its first regional final.
Leopards coach Don Flora remembered the long trip back to California, which made his team’s 30-25, 30-26, 31-29 sweep in Saturday’s regional final in front of 925 Pirates fans a little bit more special.
“We made our freshmen, who are now seniors, stay and watch that final,” Flora said of the 2002 regional final. “So for a few of us, it was a little bit of exorcising the ghosts. … Being able to go in and get it done in Whitworth Fieldhouse is just special.”
Whitworth had the homecourt advantage and seven seniors, including five starters, but the Pirates (22-4) simply couldn’t keep up as the talent of La Verne (23-8) took over. Freshman Brianna Gonzales took over the match for the Leopards in the second game, nailing three kills in a 5-0 ULV run and six for the game.
“When you have someone who has the ability to take some big swings in crunch time and have the opportunity to set her when she’s hot, you say, ‘Hey, let’s go to her,’ ” Flora said. “It’s really nice to have someone who is coming into their own at the right time of the year.”
Errors also started to pile up for Whitworth, which hit minus-.023 in the first game and just .058 for the match with 30 attack errors.
“Most teams, no matter how good they are, check out at some point mentally,” Whitworth All-American Natalie Danielson said. “We didn’t check out too many times, but the times we did it worked against us.”
Whitworth managed to carry some momentum to open the third game as the Pirates took advantage of some early La Verne errors on their way to a 10-4 lead and ULV timeout.
“We weren’t going to go down without giving everything we had out there,” Whitworth coach Steve Rupe said. “You dig a little deeper when your back’s against the wall.”
“I think it was a matter of us being a veteran team and not just rolling over and dying,” Danielson said. “We were going to go out with a bang.”
La Verne responded, as seniors Courtney Rollins and Mandy Sedia drilled shots down the sidelines in the back half of the court and applied pressure on the Whitworth defense.
“We knew what we had to do, and we knew how to do it,” Gonzales said. “We had to take advantage of the fact that they were already down two games and we were on top, and we had to come out and show them that.”
Danielson, however, thrived under the pressure, scoring four of five Whitworth points to start a frantic see-saw battle as the Pirates tied the game at 26, 27, 28 and 29.
Meanwhile, La Verne kept taking the lead as a result of Whitworth service errors. The Pirates made five such mistakes in the third game and eight for the match.
“Our missed serves really came at bad times,” Rupe said. “That was the one thing that really hurt us.”
The Leopards finally closed out the match as sophomore Jodi Lindsay drilled back-to-back shots to Whitworth’s back left quarter of the court.