La Pietra got a much-needed win over St. Andrew’s Priory on Saturday, beating the Pride 25-20, 25-20, 25-19 to earn the final Division II state tournament slot for the Interscholastic League of Honolulu. The Panthers will join St. Francis and Hawaii Baptist Academy on the road to the championship.
La Pietra coach Alicia Arnott was relieved that the team locked up a spot in the tournament Saturday. Had St. Andrew’s won, the two teams would have had to play again on Tuesday for one final match.
"Mentally it would have been tough to have to come back and play them again," Arnott said. "I was a little worried that they would come into the game thinking they had one more chance to win on Tuesday, if they lost. But they didn’t. They were totally prepared."
Junior outside hitter Ariana Sattler led the team with 20 kills, and senior Salote Lopes-Liutolo had nine kills. Gigi Murray led St. Andrew’s with 13 kills, and Sofia Luczak had 19 assists.
La Pietra led throughout the first two sets. The Panthers’ biggest lead came in the first set, when they took advantage of five St. Andrew’s errors for a nine-point advantage.
"We told them they needed to relax and play our game," said St. Andrew’s coach Lani Elliazar. "(La Pietra) wasn’t doing anything. It was all our mistakes. We told them we were shooting ourselves in the foot."
Elliazar said that most of those mistakes were caused by nerves.
"We never got this far before and they just didn’t want to make any mistakes," she said.
Her pep talk seemed to help a little, as St. Andrew’s kept it close for the next two sets. A few times in the second set, it got a little too close for comfort for Arnott. Each time St. Andrew’s cut the lead to two, she’d call a timeout to break up the play.
"I told them to keep it simple," she said. "All season I’ve been focusing on the mental aspect of the game and I wanted them to relax. Take it one step at a time."
The second set was the tightest of the night, with a long rally that consisted of heavy offensive attacks from Lopes-Liutolo. Each of her attempts was dug by St. Andrew’s back row, with St. Andrew’s eventually winning that rally to tie it up at 20-20.
But that was the end of it, as La Pietra’s Chelsea Cypress served up two aces in a row en route to closing out the set at 25-20.
"We just could not slow down their attack," Elliazar said. "All week we’ve been trying to prepare to defend against them. We just could not slow them down on the block.
"They practiced so hard to get to this point. They have nothing to be ashamed of. We’re so proud of them."
