Following a loss to West Ranch earlier in the week, Saugus girls’ volleyball rebounded at home, defeating Cleveland High School 25-21, 25-13, 25-17, and securing head coach Zachary Ambrose’s 400th win with the program.
“You don’t really think about it until it happens,” Ambrose said. “The last few years have been incredibly successful, so I think it came a little bit faster than I thought it might.”
Ambrose joined the girls’ volleyball program in 2005 and coached the team until 2013, taking three years off before joining the program again in 2016.
In that time, Saugus girls’ volleyball has accomplished everything from Foothill League titles to regional championships, as recently as 2022 when the varsity team won the Division 4 CIF Southern Section Championship.
“My success is really the players’ success,” Ambrose said. “My wins don’t matter unless they develop and play well to get the wins themselves. So, I can’t take a ton of credit for the victories.”
Ambrose reflected that even though getting to win No. 400 is a great achievement, his most proud accomplishment is how successful the team has been throughout the years.
“It’s a nice number to have, and I’m proud that I was able to achieve it, but a lot of that credit just goes to players that have been coming through Saugus, especially the last eight years, to keep our level of success really high,” he said. “Especially this year, graduating five starters out of seven players and we’re right back in the mix and competing at a very similar level. And that, I’m even more proud of than the 400 last night.”
In the win over Cleveland on Thursday, senior Taylor Stires set a career high in kills with 24 in 31 attack attempts across three sets — a bounceback performance that has left Ambrose pleased.
“She’s been playing well, consistently as of late,” Ambrose said. “She hit real well against West Ranch where she had 12 kills and very limited errors. And that carried over — she just had one of those nights where everything she hit found the floor.”
Also turning in an impressive performance was opposite hitter Kimora Hogains, who recorded seven kills along with eight aces.
“She’s one of our top leaders on our team,” Ambrose said. “So, it’s nice that she gets some of those kills. And even though she only had seven, they were very efficient, not a lot of swings and very few errors. So that’s a good combination.”
Following the win over Cleveland, Ambrose believes the victory can give his team confidence to perform in the second half of the Foothill League schedule.
“The win gives us the confidence again to play and dictate the game the way we want to,” Ambrose said. “The league seems to be in a lot of parity right now, everyone’s beating everybody. With us being a young team, sometimes we struggle with consistency, so we’re always finding that importance of keeping our level up as much as possible, because we know that any team can come up and beat another team as we finish off the first round of league.”
Saugus picks up league action on Tuesday at home, facing off against Hart.
