ANAHEIM — At one point this season, the Moreno Valley girls volleyball team was 0-8, and playing in November was more a dream than anything else.
But Vikings coach JB Strawn was patient with her young team that featured three players from a 2023 section championship team and Moreno Valley fought their way into the playoffs as a runner-up from the Inland Valley League, finishing regular season play on a six match winning streak.
Saturday night, in the CIF Southern Section Division 10 championship match at and against Anaheim High School, the Vikings finished their unconventional path to a title with a 25-20, 25-13, 24-26, 25-23 win that gave the school its second title in three years.
Moreno Valley, now on an 11-match winning streak, will find Sunday afternoon who they’ll play in CIF State regional tournament play that begins on Tuesday evening.
Kennady’e Jenkins had 12 kills with two aces for the Vikings, while Ava White added eight kills with five aces in the win.
“It took us a while to put things together, but once we did this team really got going,” Strawn said. “We’re really young and a lot of the struggle at the beginning was just trying to figure out who fit in what role. But those veterans from 2023 were really great leaders in that process and it paid off.
“What’s even more impressive is that we’re doing this with no club players. All the growth and development comes from within high school play and the few days during the offseason where we might be able to get into the gym.”
Midway through set one, the Vikings trailed 12-9 after back-to-back kills from Anaheim’s Amiyah Porter. However, the Colonists gave Moreno Valley four of their next seven points on errors that leveled the set at 16. Kaliyah Trice had back-to-back kills to push Moreno Valley to a 20-16 lead. Baylee Williams’ ace and an Ava White kill finished off the set.
“What we just did doesn’t register right now,” White said. “All those touches in the summer pay off when you get to a spot like this, and I think we’re setting the standard for the girls that will follow us going forward.”
Set two was all about the Vikings’ service game, which produced nine aces to just one service error en route to a 25-13 win. White started it off with back-to-back aces, while Williams and Trice also contributed back-to-back aces when they were at the line to give the Vikings a 14-5 lead. Williams finished the set with four aces, two of which came in the final five points, and a kill from Jenkins finished off another set win for the Vikings.
“Even at 0-8 my confidence in our team never wavered and I knew that if we could get in we could do something like this again,” Jenkins said. “Coming home with another ring is such an incredible feeling, especially with the road we took to get here.”
In total Moreno Valley servers combined for 19 aces to just seven errors on Saturday night.
“I wasn’t entirely pleased with our serving in the semifinals, so it was a big point of emphasis over the week and I couldn’t be happier with how we executed at the line tonight,” Strawn added.
With its season on the line, Anaheim found a way to send the match to a fourth set. Senior setter Katharine Cruz served up four straight aces sandwiched around a timeout to give Anaheim a 17-12 lead in the third set. Back-to-back Vikings’ attack errors kept the match alive as the Colonists got on the board.
Janice Arizmendi’s kill gave Anaheim a 20-16 lead late in set four and put the Colonists five points away from a fifth set. However, Anaheim attackers committed six attacking errors in the stretch run to put the Vikings on match point at 24-22.
Arieanna Devilla Atilano’s kill staved off one match point but one final Colonist attacking error set off a wild celebration on the Moreno Valley side of the net.