From Staff Reports: You won’t hear players or coaches from Poly making excuses about their draw. It is, however, a fact that the Panthers had to take a 75-mile bus ride out to the campus of No. 1 seeded Quartz Hill for their CIF-SS Division 4 championship match against the Rebels on Saturday night. It’s […]
From Staff Reports:
You won’t hear players or coaches from Poly making excuses about their draw.
It is, however, a fact that the Panthers had to take a 75-mile bus ride out to the campus of No. 1 seeded Quartz Hill for their CIF-SS Division 4 championship match against the Rebels on Saturday night.
It’s more common for playoff games, especially title contests to be played at a neutral site, including Cerritos College, where many of the CIF matches were played Saturday.
But it is what it is and Poly went to Lancaster to take on a program that had 35 wins heading into their title tilt.
And while the outcome will say that Quartz Hill swept the Panthers, the scores are more indicative of the fight Poly put up before eventually falling.
Quartz Hill earned the 30-28, 25-23 and 25-16 victory to claim the D4 championship.
Kate Salembier and Ella Mao had 9 kills apiece for Poly.
Alexis Pappachan added 7 kills.
Zoey Mao (30 digs) and Lauren Kidman (26) combined for 56 of Poly’s 62 assists.
Zoey Mao also had 3 kills, 3 blocks and 4 aces.
Debbie Hong contributed 4 aces, 3 assists and 5 digs for the Panthers.
Poly will get its CIF State bracket today (Sunday) as their season continues this week.
Quotable:
Poly coach Katrina Damasco: “I am so proud of my girls. It’s not easy to play such a big game on the opponents home court. But my girls battled it out point after point. Quartz Hill is a very talented team with a lot of experience playing together. We played well, fought hard, and did a lot of really great things. But my young team are true rookies when it comes to playoff experience and walking into a packed gym and playing in front of the opponent’s home crowd for such a big game.”
Records: Poly (19-6); Quartz Hill (36-6)
