2015
After a successful Madera Classic girls volleyball tournament, the Liberty Hawks kept the momentum going with two dominating victories to improve to 16-3.
With a sweep over Fresno Christian and McLane-Fresno, the Hawks head into their final week of non-conference action with their toughest two matches on the schedule — a match at Edison-Fresno and a home match against Sunnyside-Fresno.
“Those teams are two huge games for us,” Liberty head coach Brandon St. Lucia said. “It’s always fun to beat a bigger school. We’ll see how it goes.”
For St. Lucia and the Hawks, this week was designed to minimize mistakes and be more consistent.
“Serving has been our Achilles Heel,” St. Lucia said. “We wanted to make sure to maintain serves and keep it on the court.”
The Hawks still had their problems on the serve, but also dominated, at times, from behind the line. In the two matches, the Hawks recorded 32 aces despite committing 13 service errors.
2018
Coyotes extend CMAC winning streak
SANGER — The Madera Coyotes volleyball team played longer than expected, but extended its County/Metro Athletic Conference winning streak to 14 matches after a four-set win over Sanger.
The Coyotes lost the first set 25-17 and looked to be shaken. Madera head coach Meghan Haas made an adjustment and it made a world of difference. The Coyotes won the next two sets, 25-12 and 25-17.
“That made a huge difference,” Haas said. “With those kinds of hitters, their attacks are low and the attacks go off our hands and it’s hard to play defense. We did that against a team in a tournament against all of their hitters and it worked wonders. It wasn’t something new for us. We had two kids we were blocking and the others we just wanted to make plays.”
The Coyotes only put a block on Sanger outside hitter Mackenzie Jennings and middle blocker Sarah Herring while playing defense against the rest of the hitters.
However, Sanger battled back in the fourth set and got to set point, 24-23. Madera battled back to get to match point. The teams went back and forth before Sanger hit out of bounds on match point for a 32-30 win in the fourth set.
Isabella Saucedo led the Coyotes with 24 kills to go with five blocks. Lilly Ascencio returned and put down five kills to help lift the Coyotes after the first set.