The Durango High School volleyball team got off to a slow start Thursday in the first round of the Class 4A state volleyball tournament at the Denver Coliseum, but the Demons eventually settled in and rallied to force a decisive Game 5.
No. 12 DHS squared off with No. 5 Lewis-Palmer High School to begin the tournament. After Lewis-Palmer took the first set 25-14, the Demons responded and won Set 2 25-21.
LPHS won the third set 25-17.
DHS then won the fourth set in extra points, 26-24, to force a fifth set.
The final set was tied late at 10, but LPHS scored four in a row and won the set 15-11 to take the match.
“Well, I feel like we definitely had jitters and didn't play our best volleyball – and still we were able to come that close to them,” said DHS head coach Kelley Rifilato. “So hopefully we're comfortable in the next match we play, and we'll just play it one point at a time.”
DHS will return to the court at 12:30 p.m. Friday and play either No. 3 Windsor, No. 6 Niwot or No. 11 Woodland Park in the elimination bracket.
“My God, I love these kids,” Rifilato said. “You say it out loud, and they'll do it. They adapted and did some great things, and all we can do is feed off of this and move on to the next one, play fast and play our game.”
In the decisive fifth set against Lewis-Palmer, DHS got on the scoreboard first, but Lewis-Palmer tied it at 2-2 and 3-3. DHS went up 4-3 when Hayden Neiman and Emma Burns combined for a scoring black. Lewis-Palmer took a 10-6 lead, but two kills from Aava Dreger helped DHS tie the score 10-10.
“After the second or third game, I didn't want to look to see how many kills (Aava) had,” Rifilato said. “But I went and looked, and I was like, 'Ah, I thought so!' And then … by the end she'd lit it up the last two games. She definitely is very cerebral, takes in everything you tell her and remembers it – a student of the game, and it's fun to watch her play.”
A couple of unforced Durango errors, however, helped LPHS go up 14-11. On the next point, Leah Wolf jumped and was able to get a block on Amya Speller’s spike, but didn’t stop it from scoring.
In general, Durango continued getting better defensively as the game went on, but did give up 11 aces.
“The nerves definitely battered us on serve-receive, but other than that I thought we made good adjustments defensively,” Rifilato said. “We were able to deflect balls instead of missing balls that, at the beginning of the game, were being driven straight down. And we were able to capitalize on their defensive deficiencies; we talked a lot about (hitting their) open court.”
Sarah Somrak in particular made an adjustment that Lewis-Palmer had to then adjust to.
“When she'd delay her block just a little bit, she was able to get in front of those guys and all of a sudden they had to start to tip and roll, you know?” Rifilato said.
The Demons, now with some state experience, will get another chance to put it all together on Friday.
“I'm just proud of us because (Lewis-Palmer’s) a dynasty,” Rifilato said. “I know these kids don’t really know that – and we don’t talk about it – but they’ve been here before. And our kids are just finding a way to get comfortable with this whole setting, but I couldn’t ask more of them. They did a great job and hopefully tomorrow it’s just even better.”
