Cerritos Spikers Sweep Mayfair, Remain in Total Control of Suburban League

By Loren Kopff

At the rate the Cerritos girls volleyball team is going, the only team that can beat the Lady Dons are the Lady Dons themselves. What was supposed to be a competitive battle between Cerritos and Mayfair, the last two remaining undefeated teams in the Suburban League, turned out to be another low scoring sweep for the Lady Dons this past Tuesday.
For only the fifth time in at least the last 23 meetings, all of which have come since 2005, the Lady Dons knocked off the Monsoons 25-8, 25-12, 25-12 to improve to 10-1 overall and 6-0 in the circuit. Including games played in the Mayfair Tournament, the Lady Dons have lost seven out of 43 games played this season. Cerritos is also the third ranked team in the California Interscholastic Federation-Southern Section Division III-A polls.
The last two matches have been against Mayfair and last season’s league champion, La Mirada. But Cerritos allowed 36 points in sweeping the Matadores on the road on Oct. 14. Cerritos has won 10 straight with the last eight coming via a sweep.
“We were expecting the same competition,” said junior middle blocker Jessica Wu. “Last year, we played a good match against them, too. It’s just that this year we have to step up our game if we really want the league title and that’s our goal.”
Mayfair was leading 5-4 in the first game but a serving error gave senior middle blocker Jenny Ho the serve and she promptly reeled off six straight points with a pair of aces, two kills from Wu and two violations from the Monsoons. Following a Kristen Taylor block, the Lady Dons put the game away when senior setter Samantha Adams served nine straight points with Wu collecting three more kills and Adams putting down three aces.
The second game started out promising for the Monsoons again, leading 6-4 but earning half of those points. After Ho tipped her seventh kill of the match, she was subbed out for senior defensive specialist Janice Chung, who served six straight points. Seconds later, Adams propelled her team to the victory with seven consecutive points to make it a 19-7 advantage.
But, all was not clean and crisp by the standards of Cerritos head coach Khanh Vo, who had to call a timeout with his team leading 21-11 to regroup the team.
“We have to work on our mental approach,” Vo said. “I felt at that point, we had a mental lapse and we let a few balls drop that shouldn’t have dropped. I let them know that if they wanted to compete, especially at the higher level, they just have to approach the game mentally stronger.”
Whatever he said immediately worked as senior outside hitter Jackie Trimble had a kill, followed by a Ho block of Dana Brown and a kill from senior middle blocker Jade Garrett. The hosts kept the momentum going in the third game as Wu began with her 10th kill, then Trimble served four straight points, the last two on aces. The lead would grow to 17-5 after an ace from Wu and the defense held on the rest of the way. Mayfair never scored more than three straight points at any time in the match and was limited to 19 kills.
Meanwhile, Ho and Wu each had 12 kills while junior outside hitter Cherise Kam added 10 kills and Adams had eight aces.
“I think every team knows Jenny is the center of our offense,” Vo said. “So I said, ‘go ahead’. I’ll just leave her by herself in the front row and challenge the rest of the league to try to stop her. At this point, she’s playing at a certain level where when she’s on her “A” game, I don’t think she can be stopped.”
“I think we have all stepped up our game,” Wu said. “It’s working pretty well this year.”
The Lady Dons are halfway through what they hope is their third league title since 1995. The team has allowed no more than 37 points in any league match thus far, which was one of the lesser goals set by Vo at the beginning of the season.
“It’s definitely pressure but we set goals for ourselves and we try our best to make them,” Wu said. “If we don’t, then we take our consequences.”
Cerritos, which hosted last place Norwalk this past Wednesday, will visit John Glenn today and will go for the season sweep of Mayfair on Monday. The team will then conclude the road portion of league action on Wednesday at Artesia. However, Vo isn’t quite ready to hoist another league championship on the walls of the Cerritos gymnasium. “It really depends on how we play,” Vo said. “For the most part, it showed today. There were points where we played really well and there were points where we just didn’t play very smart. I expect La Mirada and I expect Mayfair to come back and give us a better match next time.
“My approach to the game is once you get to a certain level, we try to get to the next level,” Vo added. “We’re at a pretty high level right now, I agree. But in order to become championship caliber-to get to that No. 2 or No. 1 ranking, a lot of it is mental. You don’t see championship teams drop balls that we dropped today.”