The Palo Alto girls' volleyball team made school history by earning a second straight trip to the CIF Division I state championship match following a sweep of visiting Menlo-Atherton on Tuesday night. The top-seeded Vikings (35-3) punched their ticket to the state finals with a 25-17, 25-7, 25-15 victory over No. 3-seeded Menlo-Atherton (31-7) in the NorCal title match.
Palo Alto will face No. 2 SoCal seed Marymount (33-4), which upended top-seeded Los Alamitos, 21-25, 25-20, 25-20, 25-21, in the SoCal finals on Tuesday. The Division I state finals will be Saturday's at Concordia University in Irvine at 7 p.m.
Paly seniors Melanie Wade and Maddie Kuppe finished off the Bears with 17 and 14 kills, respectively, while senior Kimmy Whitson set them up with 36 assists. Wade (five) and Whitson (four) led the block party while Kuppe added 13 digs. Senior Jackie Koenig contributed eight digs and three aces as the Vikings won for the 20th straight time.
Menlo-Atherton finished off the best season in program history, winning two NorCal matches for the first time ever and winning more matches (31) than ever before. The Bears played without junior Ali Spindt, the PAL Bay Division MVP this season. She missed the match due to illness.
posted by Palo Alto Online on Nov 29, 2011 at 9:28 pm
