ANAHEIM — The Anaheim girls volleyball team was on the verge of making program history Saturday night in the CIF-SS Division 10 final.
But after not dropping a set all postseason, the Colonists quickly fell behind 2-0 before rallying but ultimately falling to Moreno Valley in four sets, 20-25, 13-25, 26-24, 23-25.
Anaheim coach Jose Ceja maintained a positive outlook and displayed an immense amount of pride despite the outcome.
“I’m proud of them,” Ecja said. “I mean, it takes so much effort and energy to get to this part of the journey. So I told the girls, chin up. We’re all young. We’re coming (back) here again next year. It’s not a do or die thing , we’re blessed.”
“We’ve never been this far in our history, and just for the fact of us being runner-up, it’s big. It’s a huge accomplishment for these girls, so I’m really proud of them.”
The stage was set as Anaheim (16-13) was playing in its first CIF-SS final with the match held on its campus in front of its faithful cheering section.
But it seemed as if the moment became too big, as the Colonists made uncharacteristic errors and at times even struggled with the fundamentals.
Moreno Valley took advantage of the miscues to take a commanding 2-0 lead in the match.
Ceja pointed out that the youth of his team played a factor in the first two sets.
“They’re young, we have a lot of freshmen and sophomores on the team,” he noted. “I’m only losing two seniors (starters), our libero Gina Garcia and setter Kathrine Cruz. Everyone else is freshmen or sophomores, so realistically we expected those mistakes to happen.”
Anaheim battled back in the third set behind the play of junior middle blocker Janice Arizmendi (10 kills) and junior outside hitter Jazmine Aranjo.
The set was tied 23-23 before the Colonists pulled away to avoid the sweep.
The Colonists looked primed to force a decisive fifth set with freshman Amiyah Porter playing a huge role in the fourth set.
Anaheim led 22-18 but the Vikings stormed back with a 7-1 run to close out the match.
Moreno Valley (18-15) has won two CIF-SS titles in three years.
Ceja is optimistic about the future of the Anaheim volleyball program and looks forward to the CIF State Regional playoffs that begin next week.
“Our goal is to go one point at a time, back to the fundamentals, and just teach them, hey, we made it really far in CIF but now let’s say, it’s a different ballgame,” Ceja said. “So we’re going to go back to square one and get ready to fix our little errors.”
“We’re in the right place,” he added, “right time and I feel I know for a fact that Anaheim will get another opportunity to go to the finals. And we will bring a ring home. It’s just a matter of time.”