Kelseyville knocks off Eureka 25-22, 25-23, 18-25, 25-22 in quarterfinals
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KELSEYVILLE >> Headed back to the North Coast Section semifinals for the first time since the 2018 season when they compiled a 33-7 record and reached the NorCal playoffs, the Kelseyville Knights delivered a 25-22, 25-23, 18-25, 25-22 quarterfinal-round win over the Eureka Loggers on Saturday night at Kelseyville High School.
“We haven’t done this for a while,” Kelseyville head coach Donelle McCallister said of the Knights posting back-to-back victories in the Division 4 playoffs, something made a little more difficult these days by the section’s new “competitive equity” playoff system whereby teams can move up or down by as many as two divisions.
Eureka (21-8), champion of the Humboldt Del-Norte Big Five, is a Division 3 team that moved down into the Division 4 playoffs. Kelseyville’s first-round opponent, Newark Memorial, is a Division 2 team.
The Knights now draw a Division 5 team in Urban School of San Francisco, a private school where the tuition runs almost $65,000 a year. Urban, seeded ninth in the original 16-team Division 4 bracket, upset No. 1 seed Sonoma Academy in another quarterfinal-round match Saturday, winning 18-25, 25-20, 25-14, 25-19. As a result, Kelseyville hosts Urban on Wednesday in the semifinals while No. 2 Montgomery (Santa Rosa) and No. 3 Convent of the Sacred Heart (San Francisco) play in the other semifinal.
Semifinal winners meet next Saturday in the championship match while the losers face off in a third-place game that has some real meaning since the winner earns a berth in the NorCal playoffs. The Montgomery-Convent winner will host the championship match while the loser will host the third-place match.
Whereas both Eureka and Newark Memorial moved down from higher divisions to play against No. 4 seed Kelseyville in the Division 4 playoffs, Urban was moved up from Division 5 after placing third in the Bay Counties West league behind powerhouses University (San Francisco) and Marin Academy (San Rafael). The Blues take a 13-12 record into Kelseyville on Wednesday night after back-to-back playoff wins over No. 8 Piedmont and No. 1 Sonoma Academy.
“They’re going to be tough,” McCallister said of the Urban squad. “They are probably a very defensive team.”
Eureka certainly had a height advantage against Kelseyville in terms of hitters, but the Knights’ defense was the difference during the four-set-long battle.
“They (Loggers) had some wonderful hitters, but AJ was right there the whole time,” McCallister said of senior libero AJ Wurm. “AJ saved our hides today.”
Wurm finished with a team-best 26 digs as Kelseyville, co-North Central League I champion this season, improved to 21-8 overall.
While Kelseyville struggled at times, especially on offense, the defense, led by Wurm, came through more than not.
“I think we had more hitting errors in that fourth set that we made in the first three sets combined,” McCallister said. “And we made some mental mistakes out there, too.”
Kelseyville took a commanding 20-8 lead in the fourth set before falling apart on offense and even defense. Eureka chipped away at the lead and was within a couple of points before the Knights, after a couple of timeouts, finally regrouped and scored the final five points they would need to take the set and match.
After the Knights won the first two sets, both of them heavily contested by Eureka, the Loggers jumped out to a 6-0 lead in the third set and were never really challenged, holding a healthy lead throughout the set. Likewise, the Knights responded by scoring the first six points of the fourth set before opening up a much as a 12-point lead before the Loggers came roaring back.
While Wurm certainly made her presence felt by pursuing the ball everywhere it went, jumping a chair near the bench at one point, and smacking her head hard on the floor late in the match, she had all kinds of help from her teammates, namely sophomore Riley Hanson.
“Another double for her,” McCallister said of Hanson’s team-high 18 kills as well as 18 assists. She also had 11 digs and three aces.
Madi Byrne, a freshman, added 12 kills while Olivia Bushey had 11.
“She did really well,” McCallister said of Byrne, the lone freshman in Kelseyville’s starting lineup.
Also contributing toward the victory with some solid numbers were Madeline Borghesani with 27 assists, Bella Patti with 14 digs, four kills and two aces, Liberty Lewis with 14 digs and Mati Mateer with five kills, two blocks and three aces.
The Knights are pursuing their first section title since winning the Division 4 crown in 2001 when they were led by Kristen Andre, who would move on to play at the University of Tennessee.
