Blazing new trails, that's what the Union Mine Diamondbacks girls volleyball team is doing for their school this year.
After capturing the CIF Sac-Joaquin Division IV Section Championship a week ago, the Diamondbacks took to the home court on Tuesday and beat Soquel of San Jose, 3-1 (25-21, 16-25, 25-23, 25-12), to add "NorCal Champion" to their list of titles this season.
Next stop, the Division IV State Finals, Saturday at Concordia University in Southern California.
"I've been waiting for this since my freshman year. I'm so excited to be going down to So. Cal," said Union Mine outside hitter, Mikayla Tucker who finished with a game high 24 kills.
Nestled in the small town of El Dorado, just minutes from Shingle Springs, Union Mine High School has a population of approximately 1,000 students, and until this volleyball season started the school had never won a section championship, let alone a NorCal championship in one of the major sports.
"It's so amazing," said senior libero Maddy Berridge. "It was so hard on the court, but now the feeling is so undescribable. That was really close and we knew we were going to have to work for it and they weren't going to away."
Union Mine took the first set 25-21 behind eight kills off several power blasts by Tucker, but Soquel made some adjustments and took the second set 25-16.
"We just had to start worrying more about ourselves, and our game and how we were playing, instead of who was on the other side of the net, how big they were and what they were doing," said Tucker. We just needed to focus more on ourselves and how we were doing."
The key to victory for Union Mine was taking the all important third set, and it was a battle. With Soquel holding a lead for almost the entire set, Union Mine grabbed a one-point lead twice (17-16 and 18-17). Soquel took the lead back at 19-18 and held the advantage until Union Mine tied it up at 22-22.
Down the stretch it was Tucker with one kill after the next, along with fellow senior Jacqueline Swarbrick (9 kills) who had the game-winner with a nicely placed tap over the net for the 25-23 win to take a two games to one lead.
Said Tucker, "It hit us right after the third game that we were only one game away from winning, and that's all we needed to do was just focus for the next 25, and it was ours, and we were ready."
After that, the fourth and final set was all Union Mine.
The Diamondbacks took at 4-0 lead and never looked back. Up 15-10, it soon became 24-10, until Swarbrick again delivered with the 25-12 game-winner, a big time kill at the center of the net that was set up by senior Lea Howton. That final point by Swarbrick triggered a major celebration at center court as students rushed the floor, while players piled on Tucker.
"I'm kind of speechless right now," said Swarbrick. "I'm so thankful for the confidence we have as a team in each other, and the trust we have to play really good against these hard teams and I'm so excited for this opportunity we have to represent the school and go down there for State. It was just an aggressive mindset I was trying to have and I couldn't have done it without the passes from our libero and our other outside, everyone just passed amazing and our setter was awesome and without them us hitters can't do anything. We really have to count on each other," said Swarbrick.
Union Mine fell to Vista Del Lago in last year's Division IV Section Championship, and then followed that up with a first round loss on the NorCal playoffs.
For head coach Mike Yates, it's been a constant battle to for Union Mine to prove itself.
"All year we've been this small team, the underdog, and coming up against huge teams like this, it's always a situation where we have to have our best game or we're in trouble. If we just keep fighting, we can pull it out. It's kind of weird to take kids who have never been there before and to watch their reactions, that's the fun part of this," said Yates.
While Union Mine is led by the big hitting of Tucker and Swarbrick, Yates knows his team's success has been a complete team effort.
"A lot of people look at the offense, they look at whose our big hitters, but this team is mainly about what happens behind the scenes. Maddy comes up huge, she's amazing, she's all over the court. Lea puts up the ball where we need it all the time, so it makes Makayala's and Jacqueline's job easier. If they get anything close, those two are just automatic. Ultimately what it comes down to is each person doing their job right, and the people we got on the court are obviously getting it done, so we just need to stay with it."
Union Mine's role as underdog will continue when they take on the two-time defending Division IV State champion, La Jolla Country Day.