Trailing by one game, Trinity Classical Academy girls volleyball team found themselves on the brink of elimination in the CIF-Southern Section Division 8 wild-card game against Bishop Diego at the Henry Mayo Fitness Center on Tuesday.
The Knights staved off elimination, completing the come-from-behind victory in five sets: 16-25, 25-21, 20-25, 25-23,15-13.
Trinity (15-9-1 overall) was in a back-and-forth battle tied 12-12 in the fourth set. Winning the next six points, the Knights got key kills from outside hitters Hannah Caddow and Paige Kim as well as big blocks from middle blocker Tamar Tchilingirian, forcing the Cardinals to call a timeout.
Caddow led the Knights with 28 kills while Kim was second with 11.
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“It starts with getting a great pass,” said libero Heidi Schafer. “If we get a great pass then we get it to the setter and the setter gets it to Hannah and she gets a lot of kills for us. It’s about trusting each other, it’s never just on one person.”
Playing it tight, Bishop Diego (12-13-2) fought back to narrow the Knights’ lead to one point at 22-21.
Going point-for-point, the Knights found themselves up 24-23 with Bishop Diego serving. The serve went far and the Knights took the fourth game on a service error 25-23.
“I couldn’t be more proud,” Caddow said. “The whole year we have been struggling with finding that comeback momentum. When we started going down none of us got scared, we just knew that we were going to come back.”
Forcing a fifth game, neither team had a lead that exceeded two points. Down 10-8 and coming out of a timeout, Trinity stormed back, taking the next two points to tie the game at 10-10 after a Caddow kill.
“I was just telling myself, ‘This isn’t it. This is our game,’” Caddow said. “I just kept reiterating it to myself.”
Bishop Diego called a timeout down 13-12 and then another one down 14-13, with the inevitable comeback coming to fruition.
Trinity’s Riley Spector served a ball that was returned back to Caddow, who passed it to Nicole Amoroso, who then set up Caddow for the match-winning kill.
Trinity completes the come back with a 15-13 fifth set victory. The Knights live to play another day! pic.twitter.com/hCuWu5ngn3
— Diego Marquez (@goDiegoMaDiego7) October 17, 2018
Amoroso finished the match with 56 assists.
“I think that we played really well together as a family,” Kim said. “For the past few games we have been struggling to find ourselves, but I felt in the game we really just pulled through and we found ourselves, which is like being a family. We are really excited about what’s to come in the playoffs.”
With the win, the Knights advance to the first round of the Division 8 playoffs where they will face Dunn at 6 p.m. at Dunn on Thursday.