SANTA ANA — The Mater Dei girls volleyball team earned a sweep of Harvard-Westlake, 25-23, 25-12, 25-15, on Tuesday night in the CIF-SS Division 1 quarterfinals at Mater Dei High.
The third-seeded Monarchs (30-4) will travel to San Juan Hills on Saturday for the semifinals. The Stallions defeated second-seeded Redondo Union in five sets.
Junior outside hitter Westley Matavao led the Mater Dei attack with 12 kills.
“She’s just such a stud,” Monarchs coach Dan O’Dell said. “And I think tonight, too, you know, we were struggling passing early. I thought she took it upon herself to take a little bit more court, make sure she could touch the ball a little bit more.”
“So she did a good job at you know, ‘hey, we’re struggling right now, let me get the ball as much as possible, and I’ll make sure we get back and get on the right track,’ ” O’Dell continued. “And she kind of took on that leadership role and did a great job.”
Mater Dei and Harvard-Westlake played a tight, back-and-forth first set.
A service ace by Matavao made the score 23-20 before the Wolverines (23-8) went on a three-point spurt that included back-to-back aces by Kylie Parker to tie the score and force the Monarchs to call a timeout.
The Monarchs scored the next two points and secured the opening set.
Matavao believed it was an important sequence in the match and recalled what was said during the timeout.
“He (O’Dell) just said, do your job, lock in, play the game, stop thinking about other things, just do your job, and completely execute it,” Matavao said. “That’s exactly what we did, and we got the win.”
Mater Dei was able to control the net thanks to middle blockers Addy Coady, Sierra Robinson and Emma Kingston.
The Monarchs also received timely contributions from junior outside hitter Kaia Ciszewski and junior opposite Shewa Adefemiwa and senior setter Sam Capinpin.
“I think that first set, we were kind of a little out of sorts … Anyone could have won that game and then we were just fortunate to get those last two (points),” O’Dell said. “I think that gave us a lot of confidence going into the second set. So, being able to come through is big and it was just a testament to the girls for being the ones to make the plays at the end of the game.”
O’Dell is looking forward to facing San Juan Hills on Saturday with a trip to the finals on the line.
“I know they have one of the best opposites in the country (Megan Hodges), so she’ll obviously be an important part of that and making sure we can slow them down,” O’Dell said. “But we don’t really care who we play. Our biggest focus is to be like, whoever we play, we’ll make sure we execute our game plan as best as possible, and we’ll be ready to go.”
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