Santa Barbara High setter Jules Horton kept middle attacker Lola Heckman busy in Tuesday night’s CIF-SS Division 4 girls volleyball quarterfinal match at J.R. Richards Gym.
And Heckman appreciated the work. She went off for 19 kills in a 25-18, 25-18, 25-23 sweep of Hemet, sending the Dons (28-9) to a division semifinal berth for the second straight season. They played in Division 5 last year.
After three straight home playoff matches, Santa Barbara will travel to Glendora on Saturday. Glendora (21-12) defeated Temecula-Linfield Christian in five sets. Top-seeded Portola faces No. 4 Vista Murrieta in the other semifinal. The final is Nov. 6 or 7.
Heckman had her way against Hemet’s shorter front line, posting a blistering hitting efficiency of .724. She not only scored from the middle, she also took some swings from the outside.
“I go with the hot hitter, and Lola was on and doing really well tonight,” said Horton. “She was putting up good numbers, so that kind of turned into the (game) plan.”
On her attacks, Heckman said she emphasized placement over power against a scrappy Hemet defense that did a good job of extending rallies.
“Honestly, finding corners and being creative with the ball really works,” she said. “I think I was more about the ball placement than like power tonight. It just worked out.”
Heckman finished the first set with a kill in the middle and a putaway from the left side. In the second set, she sparked a 7-1 run with three kills and pair of blocks as the Dons opened up a 17-6 advantage. On one rally, she blocked a Hemet attack, hit the return and then finished the sequence with a kill.
“She was like hitting 1,000% for a while there — she had no errors at all,” said Santa Barbara coach Kristin Hempy of Heckman. “If she’s got a hot hand, let’s feed her as much as we can.”
Horton, who dished out 42 assists, credited her teammates for feeding her good passes to make the middle attack so effective.
“My passers definitely made life a lot easier for me tonight. They got me those good balls up front that I could give to our hitters to put away,” she said.
Hemet fought hard to extend the match. The Bulldogs came out strong in the third set and opened up a 10-4 lead. Santa Barbara rallied, getting kills from Blake Saunders, Heckman, Horton to close the deficit to 12-10.
Hemet regrouped behind the hitting of Saylah Skinner, Charlie Connell and Lilah Allred and went on a 5-1 run to extend the lead to 17-11.
Heckman sided out on a kill of an over-dig and Grace Costner followed with a service. The Dons then won a couple of long rallies on kills by Heckman to complete a 4-0 run and pull within two (17-15).
Hemet maintained the lead, but Santa Barbara kept chipping away. Trailing 21-15, the Dons got consecutive kills from Saunders (11 kills) to start their comeback. After a stuff block from Jacqueline Durling, Addy Duex served a taped-ace to begin a 4-0 service run that gave them the lead (23-22). The Bulldogs equalized before a tip by Durling and a blast by Kira Elliott (7 kills) finished the match.
“We had to grind that one out a little bit. That wasn’t our prettiest like the one on Thursday (against Ayala),” said Hempy. “We weren’t quite as sharp. Credit to Hemet, they were fired up. Their girls got swinging and passing, and they got really scrappy over there and we were just a little slow to respond. Glad we were able to respond, but we definitely had to gut that one out a little bit.”
Libero Paylin Marcillac led Santa Barbara’s passers with 20 serve receptions and had 10 digs, Saunders picked up 10 digs to complete a double-double, Horton scooped eight digs and Costner added seven.
