Despite the possible distraction, the Tologs dictated action in the first and second games and, although the Tigers battled in the third, it just wasn’t enough, as Flintridge Sacred Heart rolled to a 25-16, 25-20, 25-22 road win against the Tigers.
“I saw a lot of nerves out there on our side in the beginning,” said Flintridge Sacred Heart Coach Ernest Banaag, whose squad is ranked No. 9 in the latest CIF Southern Section Division I-A poll. “Because a lot of our girls know a lot of the girls on their team, that made it a little tough for them.
“It just felt like we just didn’t come out with the kind of urgency that we did in our other two matches. In our last two matches, I thought we came out with more of a sense of urgency and we were trying to put teams away more.”
Flintridge Sacred Heart (3-0), which finished third in the Mission League last season, looks to have a solid contributor in freshman outside hitter Kayla Lund. Against a formidable South Pasadena (1-1) front line, Lund got her share of swings and ended with 13 kills.
“I thought we came out with a lot of intensity and that’s something that we like to see,” she said. “We knew that South Pas was going to be a good team, so we knew we had to play our best against them.”
Maddie Peterson added seven kills for the Tologs.
Right from the get-go, Flintridge Sacred Heart jumped out to a 7-1 advantage in the first.
Despite the efforts of the Tigers and standout outside hitter Claire Kieffer-Wright (eight kills), they wouldn’t cut the lead to less than six points over the course of the rest of the stanza.
More than half (13) of South Pasadena’s points in the first game came on unforced errors.
