Casa shows volleyball promise in opening loss to powerful Novato

Casa Grande’s youthful volleyball team opens with a loss to powerful Novato.|

The youthful Casa Grande Lady Gauchos opened the volleyball season with a difficult task in Novato last week and came away with a 3-0 loss at the hands of a strong San Marin club.

The result was not all negative, however, as the first two sets might have gone either way after two spirited Gaucho rallies that had fans for both teams engaged in each point. Overall, it was a good effort for the visitors against a veteran Mustang team that played in the state Division V volleyball championship game last season.

Casa dropped both opening sets, 24-26, and, 20-25, but showed continued promise following a surprising showing in the North Coast Division 2 playoffs last season. “We are fielding a very young team this season,” noted coach Amber Taylor, “I think we might surprise some people.”

The Gauchos are paced again by multi-talented sophomore Lina Fakalata who made several acrobatic saves and some un-returnable cross court kills. San Marin attempted to keep the ball away from Fakalata’s end of the net for much of the game, but paid a heavy price when the second-year heavy hitter got in range. Fakalata was the only freshman to be named to the North Bay All-League team last season.

Casa battled back from a 12-7 deficit in the first set with some strong floor play by Lauren McGuinn and Savana Sutton and a couple of winning placements by Sam Dedrickson.

Four consecutive points-off serves by starter Kaitlyn Wong helped the Gauchos eventually even the count at 24-24 until the Mustangs closed it out with two hits to the open court. Sophomore Bella Blue came off the bench to make a couple of solid plays for point during the Gaucho rally.

In the second set, the Gauchos crawled within a 22-20 count on a couple of kills by Fakalata and a short tap by Dedrickson.

After capturing the first two sets, the experience of the Mustangs began to show as they wore down Casa Grande by springing to a 22-16 advantage led by the hard-hit placements of senior Liz King. She finished with 10 kills for the contest as her team made fewer mistakes in a 25-19 close out.

The play of Blue off the bench was encouraging for Casa Grande. Many of her return shots appeared a bit off balance, but they found the open floor for points. Blue, Dedrickson and Fakalata made things difficult at the net for the smooth-passing Mustangs as several shots were blocked.

San Marin captured the JV contest 25-15 and 25-16.

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