GILROY—The big swings from Ally Foster and Olivia Tabron had Christopher fans going wild, but there was another Cougar in the middle that made her presence known Tuesday night: Khaya Price.
The 6-1 junior is hard to ignore, but brings more than her stature to the team. Though Christopher was swept 3-0 by San Benito in the Central Coast Section Sportsmanship Game, the newly minted varsity player showcased her on going effort.
“She’s worked hard over the last few years, played club for the first time this last season and it’s starting to show; her I.Q., ability to go up and over a lot of athletes because she’s bigger and jumps higher,” Cougars coach Brian Calimpong said. “I like that fire out of her. Last year we always joked that we couldn’t get her to swing at anything and this year she’s been a force so far and we really hope that continues.”
Price aided her team’s Game 2 rally, picking up a block and a kill which had San Benito scrambling on the other side of the net and cut its lead to 11-7 midway through the game. She finished with four blocks and three kills for the Cougars.
“I don’t think about anything (when I’m on the court),” Price said. “I just play; I just go to the net.”
Christopher started Game 1 strong and took a 5-3 lead, but that’s the last one it would have for the remainder of the match. Miscues and struggles with the serve-pass game plagued the Cougars all night as they lost 14-25, 13-25, 15-25.
The Cougars found some life in Game 3, coming back from a 1-6 deficit to tie the game at 11-11. Unfortunately for the home team, it’s momentum was cut short as the Balers keyed in on the gaps left on Christopher’s side of the court.
“The girls are being challenged to run some more difficult things, but like I said our Achilles’ heel was the serve-pass game,” Calimpong said. “… I thought our middles played better than average, but we’re not going to win on just our middles; we need other options. I think there was a lot of unforced errors that we can clean up, they’re easy enough to clean up, but it’s going to be up to us to do that.”
Senior middle hitters Foster and Tabron were a bright spot for Christopher, leading the offense with powerful swings to deliver timely kills. Foster led the team with eight kills in the game, while Tabron had four.
“(Ally) was like ‘get me the ball and I’ll try to take care of it’ and overall she did a great job,” Calimpong said. “You can tell it’s her senior year and she wants it. She realizes that in a month and a half here it’s done.”
Sophomore Marisa Villegas was the driving force for the Balers, racking up 10 kills in the game. She was complemented by excellent serving, especially from junior Lexi Chavarria who delivered three aces and freshman Kieley Hoskins who had one.
It’s a promising start for the young San Benito team which features eight underclassmen, four of which are freshman like Hoskins.
“We’re working on trying to strengthen our offense. It’s going to take a little while to be convincing, but it was a good start,” San Benito coach Dean Askanas said. “We won’t get ahead of ourselves; one match at a time.”
Christopher will play at 6:30 p.m. at Soledad Thursday. Both the Cougars and Balers will play at the Spikefest I tournament at 8 a.m. with games at Milpitas and Independence High Schools.
“It’s about the we and we need to get that taken care of one through 14,” Calimpong said. “We’ll get back to work tomorrow and we’ll figure it out.”
