LONG BEACH \u2014 Over the past four years, Bishop Montgomery girls beach volleyball coach Sloane Morrison has watched her program evolve from indoor players learning the sand game to becoming CIF-Southern Section champions.<\/p>\n
Saturday,\u00a0Bishop Montgomery defeated Edison, 3-2, to win the CIF-SS Division 2 championship. The first beach volleyball in school history.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis season has been full of ups and downs,\u201d Morrison said. \u201cKeeping the girls motivated in practice, I thought, would be a huge challenge this year, but I\u2019ve been so blessed that they have so much self-discipline and desire to grow and work hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Knights\u2019 championship run was built on consistency.<\/p>\n
Morrison said she never altered her lineup throughout the regular season or playoffs, trusting the chemistry and dependability her pairs had built all year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did not adjust at all,\u201d Morrison said. \u201cI kept the lineup the same through all of playoffs and the regular season, provided no one was absent.\u201d<\/p>\n
That trust paid off.<\/p>\n
Morrison, who has led the program since it began in 2023, said six of her seniors have been with the team since that inaugural season, growing from inexperienced beach players into championship-caliber athletes.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing them come in as freshmen as purely indoor players, knowing absolutely nothing about how to play two-versus-two volleyball in the sand, to what I saw today on the court is absolutely mind-blowing,\u201d Morrison said.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s final tested Bishop\u2019s depth.<\/p>\n
While the top pairs battled in tight matches, the Knights\u2019 lower courts proved pivotal, particularly the No. 4 and No. 5 pairs. Sophomore twins Hailey Waters and Alyssa Waters delivered from at No. 5, while Kendall McKechnie and Carli Duda also came through at No. 4, with a straight-set win over Edison that helped swing momentum toward the Knights.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost teams just don\u2019t have that much talent that deep in their lineups,\u201d Morrison said. \u201cI feel really lucky to have such a strong pair in our fives slot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the team leaders were sisters Mia and Ava Balestrieri, the Knights\u2019 No. 1 pair, whose chemistry and experience helped anchor the lineup throughout the postseason.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith this only being our fourth year existing in beach volleyball, I think that\u2019s pretty top-notch for us to already get a banner in the gym,\u201d Morrison said. \u201cIf that can be beach volleyball for Bishop starting this year, that would be huge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONG BEACH \u2014 Over the past four years, Bishop Montgomery girls beach volleyball coach Sloane Morrison has watched…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2044,6002,131,133,132,127],"class_list":["post-298398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-high-school-sports","tag-high-school-volleyball","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}