Ripon Christian sweeps Bret Harte, three-peats as Division V section champions
All season, the Ripon Christian volleyball team focused on consistency, both emotionally and in the way it plays on the court.
In Saturday’s CIF Sac-Joaquin Section Division V championship against Bret Harte, Knights coach Kayla Kootstra believes her players reached what they were working for.
The Knights (30-6) dominated the Bullfrogs (21-5) in a sweep, 25-13, 25-11, 25-15, securing their third straight section title.
“I think our play today was a showcase of how far the girls have come this season,” Kootstra said. “That made it exciting. They played well and they played together.”
Ripon Christian leads the section in overall titles as on Saturday, it earned its 18th blue banner. The second most comes from St. Francis (13), which lost 3-1 to Oak Ridge.
Kootstra took over in 2020, right before the team lost its season due to the pandemic. In just her second season as the Knights’ coach, they’ve won two titles and this year’s team is well-rounded.
“I would say this year that we don’t have a single player that we’re building our team around,” she said. “I think that we’ve improved in most of the positions with another year of experience. Our players are putting in the time in the offseason and they’re getting the reps, and that’s showing in what we have this year.”
The Knights didn’t lose a set in this year’s section playoffs. Dating back to last season, they have gone a combined 18-1 in Division V section postseason matches.
Their game isn’t too flashy. They keep it simple.
“We focus a lot on serve and pass,” said senior Ava Van Groningen. “If we can’t start with passing, we’re not going to win the game. Really just focusing on serving and passing in our practices has really helped us win games, along with our offense.”
They jumped out to a quick lead Saturday.
Already ahead 14-9, six straight points opened it up to a 20-9 first-set lead. They ended the second with a 6-0 run and never trailed in the third after jumping out to an early 5-0 lead to put the match away.
“I think that we really just needed to play good on our side and take care of the ball,” Van Groningen said. “We just really needed to push each other and push ourselves to do the best we could in this last game.”
The Knights advance to the CIF State Northern California Regional Championships, where they will be looking to continue this season’s run. They won last year’s first-round matchup against Ripon before being swept by University Prep in the second round.
“I think we’re peaking at the right time,” Kootstra said. “I think we’re just playing good, solid team volleyball and that is going to hopefully allow us to make a run into NorCals too.
“Now we hit the spot where every day could be our last day. I think your mind-set changes a little bit but there’s also the excitement and the anticipation of winning and hopefully continuing to move on. We just take it one game at a time and see where we end up.”
