Back-to-back NorCal volleyball champs, Hilmar chases first state title Friday
Relief, joy, disbelief. All valid feelings after winning one CIF Northern California Regional title.
Now, imagine winning two.
For the second straight year, the Hilmar High volleyball team claimed a NorCal championship, beating Colusa in Division V in four sets, 25-23, 25-17, 23-25, 25-23.
The Yellowjackets were on the verge of a sweep after taking control of the first two sets late, but the RedHawks powered through in the third, claiming a two-point victory. Tensions were even higher late in the fourth set when, on the verge of a win, Hilmar fell behind 23-19.
The Yellowjackets stormed back, winning points after multiple long rallies and scoring six unanswered to take the match.
Junior Reese Ahlem led the team with 13 kills, seniors Emma Gomes and Alyssa Colston added nine and eight kills, respectively, and Emily Barroso added eight kills. Freshman Johanna Lawler had six aces, and Stella Pires had a team-high 28 assists and 14 digs.
“When Emily got the last tip, there was definitely a sense of relief,” Colston said. “I was so happy that we did it, even though we didn’t play our best game.”
The Yellowjackets got in a quick practice early Thursday morning before leaving campus at 9 a.m. for their weekend destination: Orange, where they will play Southern California champion Elsinore on Friday at 4 p.m. for a D-V state championship.
“We’ve been practicing since June,” Pires said. “We’ve worked on the weekends, every single day after school, no matter what was going on, we’ve been super committed to this team. Feeling like that was all for a reason has felt amazing.”
A learning experience
After a tough semifinals victory, the Yellowjackets prepared for three days, watching film, running through fundamentals and game situations off free balls, scrimmaging against each other with one side of the net running scout plays and writing down practice goals on a whiteboard and erasing them as they were accomplished.
At practice, it was business as usual, but there are things they hope will be different from last year’s state title match.
In 2024, the Yellowjackets jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the D-IV championship before being reverse swept by South Pasadena. Of course, they want a different result, and they know what they need to fix.
Friday will be Hilmar’s third state championship appearance. The team is 0-2 and Harris cringes when it’s brought up. They hope that ends this weekend.
With multiple returners from last year’s team, Hilmar is using the loss as a learning experience.
“Something I learned is that no matter how much skill you have and how much you want to win, it all comes down to your mindset,” Pires said. “This year, we made it a big thing to work on the mindset part of volleyball.”
Harris said every team is different from last year’s state championship qualifier, with different personalities as new players join the fold. As seniors graduate, it leaves room for others to improve.
Defensively, five players have over 150 digs. Offensively, the Yellowjackets have six players with over 100 kills.
“We were effective offensively last year, but this year it’s like a whole different energy on the court,” Pires said.
Colston went from second on the team in kills in 2024 to the team’s kills leader this season (342), Ahlem is second on the team in kills (265) and leads the team with 106 total blocks. Pires, a four-year varsity player is in the midst of her second straight season with over 900 assists (987) and adds a career-best 111 kills.
An expanded role for Ahlem also has come with a change in mindset. She said she saw that most in the NorCal championship game Tuesday. After she was blocked on attacks against Colusa, she subbed out as part of the regular rotation.
“I was on the bench like, ‘I got blocked a lot, what am I going to do about it?’” she said. “I was thinking I could go back in with the mentality that I’m going to get blocked again or I [could] be like, ‘You know what, leave it in the past.’ So I went back in and decided to leave that rotation in the past.”
It’s a 180-degree turn from how she would have dealt with a similar situation as a sophomore. “I realized I’m handling this a lot better than I would have last year, and I was proud of myself for doing that,” she said.
A strong league prepares them
The Yellowjackets have played 42 matches this season and enter the state championship with 26 wins. By this point, they’ve seen it all.
They have swept teams and been swept. They played back-and-forth five-set thrillers, won some and lost some. They have played against much larger schools, like Turlock, Merced and Clovis West in tournaments and other nonleague contests.
But nothing prepares them for the rigors of the playoffs like the Trans-Valley League.
“Every time we played in a league game, it was like playing in a section final,” Harris said. “It’s a tough league, but it’s a great league. I think that alone prepares you for the postseason.”
They finished 5-7 in league play and split the season series with Escalon, Sonora and Hughson. Every TVL team made the Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs, six made the section semifinals, qualifying them for the NorCal playoffs and three teams played for Sac-Joaquin Section titles.
In the NorCal postseason, Hilmar had to play a fellow TVL opponent, Escalon, in the regional semifinals.
“I think we see our toughest regular season competition in league … everybody says TVL is the toughest small-school league, and that’s so true,” Ahlem said. “There’s a bunch of girls who have gone on to play in college and I just think that goes to say the programs we’ve built at Hilmar and in the TVL are really strong.”
They enter the postseason prepared for what they may encounter, and the results have shown that. None of their playoff wins made it past four sets, and they tallied four sweeps in six playoff wins. Their lone hiccup was a five-set section semifinals loss to Sutter.
Over the course of the year, the team continued to improve. The players started the season as a tall, offensive-focused group, but now, coaches and players alike can say the defense caught up, creating a well-rounded outfit prepared to make school history.
“At the beginning of the season, there were some moments where I was like, ‘I really hope we get better,’” Colston said. “To see us go this far and do things we said we wanted to do is a really good feeling and I’m just really proud of this team.”
