In front of a large, enthusiastic home crowd Tohopekaliga’s volleyball team remained undefeated on the season with a 25-13, 25-16, 25-20 straight set win over Celebration on Thursday night and all but wrapped up the Orange Belt Conference championship.
Tohopekaliga (7-0 entering their final OBC match Tuesday against St. Cloud) is also the third ranked team in Class 7A according to the MaxPrep standings, trailing just Tampa Plant (6-1) and Lutz Steinbrenner (11-2) in the latest Florida rankings. The seven wins also ties the single season win record with more than six weeks remaining in the regular season.
“We’ve come a long way in a very short period of time,” Tohopekaliga coach Eric Capestany said. “When the school opened four years ago the floor wasn’t even installed but we had 42 freshman show up who wanted to play volleyball and had no idea how. This senior class has worked so hard to get to this point.”
Tohopekaliga went 3-10 in the first season and 7-11 in the second year. The Tigers posted a winning season in 2020 but was limited to just nine matches because of the pandemic. “It’s really a credit to the kids. They have worked so hard to get to this point and I still believe the best is to come,” the fourth year coach added.
Thursday’s win came despite the Tigers top player, senior Ariana Warner, having to sit out for medical clearance reasons. But sophomore Nyah Moore came up from the junior varsity and stepped in Warner’s role and came away with 18 assists in the game.
“We knew she going to get promoted to varsity and we had a plan for the young lady, but we didn’t think it would have to be tonight,” Capestany said. “She only had an hour to prepare when she learned she would be starting in her first varsity match but we knew she was ready and she definitely came out and balled tonight. She just gave us a great performance.”
Toho went on runs of 5-0 and 10-4 to take control of the first set at 20-12 and closed the game out by winning four straight points to win 25-15. The second set was all Tigers as they took a 6-0 lead and dominated by winning 16 of the last 24 points in a 25-16 win. In the third set, Celebration began to show some life with a 5-0 run to take a 9-5 lead. The teams traded points for a while with neither team gaining big advantage. The Storm would then get two consecutive aces from Victoria Fuentes to take a 17-15 lead. But Tohopekaliga finished the third game off on a 10-4 run for the straight set win.
Josi Capellan led Toho with six kills, Paige Patterson added five and Alex Ortega had three. Jody Arroyo had four service aces. But it was the play of the Tohopekaliga defense that really made a difference. Led by Danna Aguilera’s seven, Toho recorded 16 digs.
“We have really transitioned as a team,” Capestany said. “We went from a one trick pony two years ago that just tried to put balls away at the net to a team that has really started to take a lot of pride in our defense. We spend a lot of time trying to get blocks at the net and then keeping the ball off the floor when we don’t get a block.”
