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Winning a conference championship is all about controllables. After dropping their first match to Cerritos four weeks ago, the Long Beach City College women’s volleyball program focused on the main thing that they could control — practice.
An emphasis in practice intensity set the Vikings up for their rematch. Practice made perfect as Long Beach City College swept Cerritos 25-19, 25-20, 25-23 Wednesday night in front of a packed Hall of Champions.
“Ever since we lost, our practice have really been honing in on everything,” said Enaya Vaielua, sophomore opposite hitter and setter. “We’ve been watching film on [Cerritos], and all our coaches have been pushing us. So, we’ve been waiting for it, and we just wanted to play hard.”
Practice wasn’t the only thing that changed for the Vikings (20-1, 6-1) as they welcomed sophomore Ryannah Gagau, who didn’t play in their last match and was back for the first time after being out due to injury for the last month.
Gagau’s presence was immediately felt, as she had a quick five kills and an ace to give the Vikings a 10-4 lead in the first set.
“It was electrifying,” Gagau said of being back on the court. “It felt great to be able to come and show out for my team because I know how bad they wanted it. Being able to showcase what I;ve been working on since my injury is amazing.”
Cerritos didn’t go down without a fight as they leaned on sophomore Sydney May who helped jumpstart a Falcon’s rally cutting LBCC’s lead to 14-10 after a 5-0 run.
Gagau helped stopped the Falcons’ momentum, and a couple aces from Tainea Allen was enough room for the Vikings to close out the first set with a win.
The second set featured seven ties and Cerritos’ first lead of the match, but Vaielua took over knowing when to set the middle and dump the ball for easy points when she needed to.
A set to sophomore middle blocker Jubilee Allen and then a kill for herself tied the game and put LBCC ahead in consecutive points. This gave the Vikings the lead for good on their way to a 25-20 win to take a 2-0 lead on the match.
“When we lost to them if felt like they didn’t beat us – we beat us,” Allen said. “We knew that we were better than how we played.”
LBCC proved that in the third set as Vaielua, Gagau and Allen kept the Vikings in it before they clawed the final two points of for the victory after being tied at 23.
“[Cerritos] is a great program,” said Tyler Jackson, LBCC Director of Volleyball Operations. “We were really hard on the program, like every practice. We’ve been stressing that we have to beat them and we have to beat them in three.”
The Vikings did just that to complete the sweep and will wrap up the season on Friday against Compton before preparing for the SoCal Regionals that begin next week.
