Ripon appears prime to four-peat in the toughest girls volleyball league in the southern half of the Sac-Joaquin Section, but coach Greg Soliz wants his players to be at their best when bigger prizes are at stake.
On Tuesday, the club swept at rival Ripon Christian 25-17, 25-12, 25-19 for its 42nd consecutive Trans Valley League victory. The last time Ripon (4-0, 14-2) dropped a league match was on Oct. 10, 2022, a three-setter against Escalon — which so happens to be its next opponent.
Ripon trailed Ripon Christian (1-3, 8-9) just once, and anytime the host Knights built any kind of momentum, it would quickly dissipate against the reigning SJS Division III runner-up.
As impressive as Ripon has been, Soliz said the team continues to push itself in practice to guard against any letdowns and, more importantly, remain sharp for postseason play.
Ripon is ranked seventh overall in the SJS, according to MaxPreps, and has lost just three sets in nine best-of-five matches. All three of those dropped sets came against upper-division Tracy.
“We got some stuff to get better at,” Soliz said. “We’re just kind of taking it one game at a time, but at the end of the day, yeah, these league games are important, but for me, it’s about getting ready for the playoffs.”
Senior setter Alayna Sprinkle had the Ripon attack rolling with 28 assists, five kills and two aces. She also had five digs and a block. Right-side hitter Jorie Eskes amassed 13 kills and four blocks, to go with 12 digs and two aces. Ashlyn Malone added 11 kills, and freshman Lilia Tuputala pitched in with seven.
Libero Kennedy Everhart and middle blocker Elysa Meineke helped anchor the defense with 17 digs and four blocks, respectively. Everhart also served up three aces.
During the one-sided second set, Eskes came up with a pancake save, which led to a scoring tip from Malone. That gave Ripon an early 9-3 lead, and Ripon Christian coach Kayla Kootstra burned a timeout.
The stoppage did little to slow Ripon’s roll, however. A late five-point run capped by a kill from Tuputala widened the gap to 23-8.
To their credit, the Knights showed some fight in game 3 and even took their first and only lead at 3-2. Eskes tied it back up with a kill, and Everhart rung up two straight aces to give Ripon the lead for good.
“We talked about the mental-toughness side of things,” Kootstra said. “When you get down, it can be easy to spiral and keep going down, so the big thing was being able to come together, bounce back, find that next thing we need to do to execute what we want to execute. I actually felt like in the first and third sets, we did that pretty well.”
Brooklyn Postma paced Ripon Christian with 10 assists, four kills, three blocks and six digs. Rhian Heuvel had nine digs and five assists. Lauren Mouw contributed nine digs and three aces. Alyssa Hofman hammered seven kills.
Ripon Christian won both lower-level matches. The junior varsity Knights swept 25-11, 25-16, while the freshman squad prevailed, 25-20, 25-13.
Ripon hosts Escalon on Thursday, while Ripon Christian travels to Sonora.
