In just his second year as Turlock Christian’s volleyball head coach, Ken Wynne has led his team to two consecutive semi-final matches in a row, and this year hopes to make it back-to-back section titles.
With home field advantage throughout the playoffs, T.C. is now one game away from reaching the Division-IV CIF Sac-Joaquin Sections championship game for the second year in a row. This happened after dominating New Life Christian at home on Thursday with a power performance for the Eagles who swept them in straight sets, (25-11, 25-2, and 25-11).
“Our goal is to repeat and we got our eyes looking long range and playing at Davis, hopefully. The girls want to repeat, we take one game at a time,” Wynne said. “They are looking forward to the next round. The girls are very prepped and ready for that.”
It was a bit of a cruise as New Life Christian struggled with only a handful of players that included no juniors or seniors right from the start, but the Eagles did not let down for a bit as they came ready to battle.
“Well this was probably tough for them because they only had six players and no hitters,” Wynne said of the struggles of the young New Life Christian. “They were freshman and sophomore players. When you play D6 you do not know what to expect. But I wanted the girls to stay focused on our game and do what we do on our side of the net. We did not worry about the opponent at all, but just play our game.”
Everybody was on point in every set for the Eagles as they saw a total of three different offensive changes made by coach Wynne, who said he wanted everybody to play to get ready for the coming matches.
“I was able to run various offenses today that I haven’t previously,” Wynne said. “We have a pretty deep bench so no matter who I put in there they all perform well. They did not lose focus against a bit weaker team and played solid volleyball.”
Having a killer game for the Eagles was Anna Larson who finished with a game-high 10 aces to go along with Sarah Amaral’s 11 kills for the match. Tiffany Franco added 22 assists.
“Anna had a good night with aces, the first game they saw what they were up against and it carried into the shorter second game and brought full strength and switched to last lineup for the final set to get ready for playoffs,” Wynne said. “I am proud that they didn’t get down at all and were on it all game, like a finely running Swiss clock just kept it going.”
T.C. will host the winner of Sac Country Day and Victory Christian at 7 p.m. on Tuesday.
