Gilroy senior Amanda Link said she didn’t quite know how to react before her finally volleyball match at home.
“It was emotional,” she said of the Senior Night festivities prior to Wednesday’s game with North Salinas. “I was excited, but sad at the same time … a little overwhelming.
“I just knew we wanted to go out there and end on a positive note.”
And that’s exactly what they did.
Behind Link’s team-leading 7 kills, the Mustangs swept the Vikings in three games (25-14, 25-19, 25-13).
“I didn’t want it to be Senior Night,” Kendall Costa said. “But I’m glad we went out there and played the way we did.”
Gilroy led nearly the entire way, quite a grand finale for the team’s five seniors: Link, Costa, Shanna Silviera, Amy Trujillo and Michelle DiFiore.
“We wanted to win badly – especially with it being Senior Night,” Silviera said. “I was talking with Kendall and we had been excited about tonight with the presents and balloons and everything.
“Then we realized today that this game would be it.”
In what’s been somewhat of a rough season – with two league games remaining, the ‘Stangs are 13-17 and 2-6 in TCAL – GHS head coach Sam Navarez said it was good for the senior class “to go out like that.”
“They did a great job,” he said.
Navarez has coached three of his seniors – Costa, DiFiore and Trujillo – since their seventh grade year at Brownell Academy.
“With the whole group there’s a very special bond,” Navarez said. “I wish we could’ve had a better year for them, but our successes just never came in sequence.
“But I’m still very proud of them. There’s times where we could’ve given up, but they never did that. They should be commended for that.”
