Motivated Big Valley Christian crowned D-VI section champ after four-set victory
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- Big Valley Christian rebounded from 2024 runner-up finish to claim D‑VI section crown.
- Coach Michelle Camoirano guided seniors she first coached in sixth grade to victory.
- Lions beat Faith Christian in four sets and advance to CIF NorCal playoffs next week.
The Big Valley Christian volleyball team is not new to the big stage of a section championship match.
This year’s senior class was in this same position last year. After sweeping their way through the first three rounds of the Division VI section playoffs, they fell in five competitive sets to Bradshaw Christian. They advanced to the CIF Northern California playoffs and Bradshaw Christian ultimately ended their season in the second round in another five-set thriller.
That gave the players and coaches different forms of motivation.
Michelle Camoirano, who is in her first season as Lions head coach, wanted to get her team back to where she knew the players deserved to be. She started out as a middle school coach before taking over a high school program this year and has a special connection with seniors Ella Alavezos, Jenna Krieger and Morgan La Barbera.
“I started with three of the seniors when I coached them in sixth grade,” she said. “I started with them in volleyball and I get to finish with them in volleyball. It’s a really sweet thing.”
Losing motivated the returners. They did not want to feel the same pain on a big stage again this year.
“Last year was a great experience. Getting second place was good, but this year, I know this team, we wanted to fight and kept pushing,” sophomore and offensive leader Faye Dobson said. “We pushed ourselves every single practice, every single game. We made sure we played our hardest so that way we can make it to this point.
“It feels amazing to get back and win this time.”
By the end of the regular season, Big Valley Christian was the Mother Lode League champion, and by the end of Saturday’s four-set title match, the Lions were Division VI Sac-Joaquin Section champions, beating Faith Christian 21-25, 25-13, 25-16, 25-19.
“Everybody was so excited,” Alavezos said of the team’s emotions after the match. “We’ve been preparing for this since the beginning of the season.”
The Lions found their footing after a competitive first-set loss.
The final few points of the opening frame could have gone either way, but serving and hitting errors by the Lions gave Faith Christian the boost it needed.
By the start of the second set, all of that was ironed out.
After a 9-9 tie, Big Valley went on a 9-1 run, opening up an 18-10 advantage and forcing Faith Christian to call a timeout. A kill by Claire Medhurst and back-to-back points on a kill and an ace by Dobson sealed the set. After that, the Lions were rolling.
“We had a warm-up set — that’s what I would call that,” Alavezos said of Big Valley’s first-set loss. “We did great but we had the nerves. … We had the mindset of everything is the same, the court size and the net, the only thing different is where we were playing. So, that did play a role, but after that, we just kept going.”
They took the third set in convincing fashion, powered by a 10-4 start and a 7-2 run midway through the frame to open up an 18-9 lead. Three kills from Dobson and a kill by Karlie Powell closed out the victory.
Big Valley climbed out of a 7-1 hole to take a 15-13 lead, forcing a Faith Christian timeout. They took a 20-15 lead late and used a 4-1 run to close out the match.
The Lions, like every other team that advanced to at least the Sac-Joaquin Section volleyball semifinals, are not done.
They await their division and seed in the CIF NorCal playoffs, which start next week. Brackets will be posted on the CIF State website Sunday afternoon.
