Slow-Starting La Reina Beats Nordhoff in Volleyball

For the second year in a row against Nordhoff High, the La Reina girls’ volleyball team overcame a sluggish start and won a match it looked like it could lose, 5-15, 15-1, 15-12, 15-12, Tuesday night in a nonleague match at Thousand Oaks High.

Last year, the hitting and setting duo of Christy Potts and Amy Crotty helped the Regents come back from a 2-0 game deficit to win in five. This time the same players, now seniors, led another impressive comeback.

Crotty finished with 13 kills and 14 assists as the Regents, ranked No. 9 in the Southern Section 2-A Division, knocked off Nordhoff, the No. 10-ranked 2-A team. Potts played a fine floor game and contributed some key hits. She ended up with six kills and one block.

But even with the performances of Crotty and Potts, the tough serving of Tara Deukmedjian and the play off the bench of Erin Mooney, La Reina (3-1) appeared in trouble early.

“We’ve done it before and we knew we could do it again,” Potts said of the comeback. “We get through those times where little things are going wrong and then the momentum changes. Once one thing happens that is positive, you get going again.”

After being blown out in the first game as Nordhoff’s junior middle blockers Kortney Rogers and Alison Nofrey dominated play, La Reina evened the match when Deukmedjian ran off a string of 13 straight service points in the second game.

“We were playing too carefully in the first game,” Crotty said. “We were trying not to lose, instead of trying to win.

“We got more aggressive after we lost the first game.”

Even with more aggressive play, the Regents were in trouble again when Nordhoff rumbled to a 10-2 lead in the third game. But Potts had a big block in the middle of a seven-point surge and tough serving enabled the Regents to tie the score, 10-10.

The teams traded points until Deukmedjian blocked a Joanna Sandefur hit to give La Reina the lead for good. Potts converted an overset from Nordhoff into a kill for game point.

La Reina fell behind, 10-8, in the fourth game and seemed to be tiring when Crotty missed on three hitting attempts, netting two and getting called for a lift on the third. But Potts came through with another clutch kill on a Crotty set to put La Reina ahead for good, 11-10.

A Shannon Mahan ace, a stuff block from Alisa McEachern and two more kills from Crotty finished off Nordhoff.

Nordhoff, which was coming off a championship Saturday in the Calabasas Invitational, fell to 2-1.