CIF volleyball playoffs: Sonoma Valley hosts Christian Brothers

SONOMA - Sonoma Valley’s Delaney Swanson remembers the moment vividly.

Teammate and fellow senior Ciara Smith dove headlong for a ball and punched it up to Swanson, who kept the play alive. They wound up getting the point, and during the timeout that followed, coach Chelsea Scott ran up to Swanson with a big smile and blurted, “We’re going to state!”

This was late June, mind you, at an AAU tournament in Orlando, Fla. The high school volleyball season wouldn’t start for at least two months.

Even then, though, Scott and her Dragons could see they had a special season in store. Sure enough, they wound up celebrating a North Coast Section Division 3 title - Sonoma Valley’s first in volleyball since 2000, and just its sixth in any sport - last Saturday by dispatching No. 1 seed Campolindo, and are indeed headed to the CIF state volleyball championships.

“It’s kind of new territory,” senior setter Mackenzie Albrecht said. “But we’re really excited to attack it.”

Sonoma is one of five local teams in the CIF playoffs, along with Maria Carrillo (Division 2), Healdsburg (Division 4), Anderson Valley and Rincon Valley Christian (both Division 6). All of them play Tuesday night, with the Dragons hosting Christian Brothers of Sacramento.

Sonoma Valley took a 24-3 record into the section playoffs, including a 12-0 mark in the Sonoma County League, and has claimed four more victories in the postseason. That includes wins over the top two seeds in Division 3, Campolindo and Bishop O’Dowd, which also happened to be the two most recent champions before the Dragons gained the upper hand.

Sonoma Valley’s fortunes begin with Albrecht, the reigning Redwood Empire Large School Volleyball Player of the Year. Albrecht is a good server and digger, but she is more or less unmatched when it comes to setting. The senior had a staggering 52 assists against O’Dowd in an NCS semifinal, and has tallied 1,058 on the season.

Albrecht is headed to Cal on a full-ride scholarship, and her coach insists it involves a lot more than talent.

“I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it till the day I die: She’s been one of the greatest kids to work with because she’s so humble,” Scott noted. “This year has really been a big year for her mentally. … She’s incredible at making her teammates believe they can do it, but pushing them to be the best they can be every single day.”

Swanson, meanwhile, is Sonoma Valley’s most dangerous scorer. She led the team with 447 kills in 2014, though at 5-foot-10 she stands in the shadow of most opposing front-line players.

“I think it’s a lot more positioning,” Swanson said. “I was always told that I was littler so I had to be smarter when I played. I couldn’t be the big power hitter. But it’s a lot about placement.”

Other key members of the team include Smith, sophomore Jenna Mak, sophomore Kiara Miles, senior Hannah Herrick and junior Sami Von Gober. But it extends beyond them, too.

“The five girls that don’t get to see the court in the postseason are still so integral to our success as a team, because they push those kids in practice every single day,” Scott said. “It really, truly takes all 12 of them.”

“There’s no one person,” Albrecht agreed. “We all contribute in like pregame talks. And the work ethic for everyone is the same. Like you come into practice and there’s a hundred percent focus. … Not every team has that.”

The Dragons didn’t exactly come out of nowhere this year. They had gone 84-23 over three previous seasons, two under former coach Mindy Neves and one under Scott. To break through to the next level, Scott didn’t believe her players had to push harder. Just the opposite.

“The thing that I wanted to concentrate on most with this team, because they are so athletically gifted, was the composure, and the fun,” Scott said. “I wanted them to be able to relax and enjoy their senior year together with their teammates.”

Scott practices what she preaches. She’s pretty sure she called one timeout in the Campolindo game, and another against Bishop O’Dowd. And maybe one or two more beyond those over the course of the entire season. Anything more, she thinks, is overcoaching.

“I don’t need to call time out and remind that they’re not doing their jobs,” Scott said. “Because they already know that. So it’s up to them to be able to fix it. Because if I haven’t taught them what they need to do in order to get out of that situation in practice, I haven’t done my job.”

Scott, who also coaches with the Empire Volleyball club and the local middle school, and is an assistant at Sonoma State as well, grew up in Sonoma. She remembers watching the 2000 section champions host a first-round CIF game on Pfeiffer Court when she was in sixth grade. She wound up starring for the Sonoma Valley volleyball team along with classmate Mindy Wiley, now one of her assistant coaches. They graduated in 2006.

Some of the current Dragons have had a similar experience. Albrecht said she’s been watching games at Pfeiffer since she was in elementary school, and couldn’t wait to be part of the legacy.

Now this squad is writing another chapter.