Four days of non-stop volleyball tournament action came to an end Saturday (Nov. 17) when five state champions were crowned at the UNM's Johnson Gym. Leading the way was Class 5A power Rio Rancho and Moriarty, which spent the entire season firmly perched atop Class 4A rankings. In the Class 5A championship, Rio Rancho (24-2) took its third straight volleyball crown, and fifth in the last six years, by beating La Cueva 27-25, 25-19, 25-27, 25-23 in the finale. The Rams, top-seeded in the 5A field, also won a very difficult semifinal against second-seed Las Cruces the day before - a match that went five games before Rio Rancho emerged with a 25-23, 15-25, 22-25, 25-21, 19-17 victory. "Obviously, with the semifinal we had to play last night and the final tonight, nobody's going to bow down to us," Rams' senior setter Kayla Hammond said. "We're not so successful for no reason. We go out there and work as hard as we can." Hammond and Ashley Rhoades were the only starters to return from the 2006 championship team. Appropriately enough, on the campus of the University of New Mexico, it was Lobos recruit Rhoades that scored the final two kills of the match. "I was nervous, I knew this was going to be a battle," Rhoades said. "You know what, last year when everybody knew we were going to graduate ten seniors, everybody said we were going to lose. In the summer, we were out to prove we were as good as everybody. "We proved to everybody that, no matter how young you are, you can still win a state championship," the Rams senior added. La Cueva (23-3) started strong and had the first game seemingly in hand after opening a 22-17 lead late. But Rio Rancho responded with six straight points and eventually earned the game on a kill by junior Darian Mullen followed by a Bears hitting error. In the second, the Rams led nearly the whole way to put themselves one game away from victory. The third game saw Rio Rancho get three match points, but La Cueva fought them all off and eventually broke a 25-25 deadlock when the Rams missed a kill attempt and Brenna Freeze followed that with a successful one for the Bears. "All year, we've talked to our kids about not giving up, handling tough situations and handling things under pressure," said La Cueva coach Pam Zens, whose team was seeking a first state championship in school history. "If the La Cueva volleyball girls learn anything from being in our program, I hope it's that." The Class 4A title match was contested between Moriarty and defending champ Roswell, which surprised a pair of higher seeded teams (St. Pius and Del Norte) to get the title contest. The Pintos, with athletic 5-foot-11-inch twins Brandi and Kristin Valencia, made a critical switch from their usual lineup. To combat the Coyotes' biggest asset, middles Chantale Riddle and Pam Blakeney, Brandi Valencia was moved from outside to join her sister in the middle blocker rotation for the Moriarty. In the end, Moriarty got its first state title since 1983 by sweeping Roswell 25-13, 25-17, 25-19. "Brandi played there last year and we knew she was familiar with it," Moriarty coach Kim Bell said. "But the decision was based on the battle of the middles. We needed her there." The Class 3A bracket, ripped apart by upsets, saw a pair of district runner-up squads vying for the 1st-place blue trophy. Portales won its fifth championship in eight years by knocking off Robertson 11-25, 25-15, 25-11, 25-19. Robertson (16-9) actually blasted the Rams in the first game behind the hitting of junior Julie Franken and sophomore Brooke Knezevich. But Portales stepped up its level of hitting in the second game, particularly behind seniors Bethany Self and Jordan Roehl, and quickly reversed the trend of the opener. "We never really worried about it, because we did the same thing against Pojoaque (in the semifinals) when they beat us in the first game," said Roehl, who finished with nine kills. "We came out and played hard against them and we figured we just had to do it again." "I told them that we worked our butts off every day to just come up here and take a beating like this," said Chavez on her words of wisdom between the first two games. "This whole tournament has been about what team swings the hardest, that's all it's been. I don't want to go down easy, I want to go hard." The Rams took control by registering an 8-1 run in the second game. Kills by sophomore Jenna Wagner and Vicki Huber supplemented the hard-hitting from the seniors as Portales took a 14-8 lead. After giving up a couple of points to the Cardinals, the Rams scored four more - all on errors by the now reeling Cardinals. Momentum stayed firmly in Portales' corner throughout game three and the opening stages of the fourth before Robertson, making its first appearance in a championship match, slowly began to resemble the Cardinals of the first game. "We lost our confidence a little bit when Portales began swinging hard at us," said Cardinals' coach Raynee Trujillo, whose team received an at-large berth just to get into the 12-team tournament. "We've played three excellent teams the last three days and gotten by them and I think they did a great job today too." Robertson was led by Franken's 18 kills while Knezevich added ten. Self, a 6-1 hitter, had 15 kills for Portales, which also got a dozen more from Wagner. The 2A championship was expected to be contested between Texico and Mesilla Valley, who both entered the tournament. However, while Texico cruised into the title game, Mesilla Valley was eliminated in the quarterfinals by Jal - in turn knocked out by Navajo Prep in the semis. In the championship, the Wolverines had just lost recently-gained momentum in the second game when Wolverines' sophomore Victoria Richards hit a kill to snap a six-point Navajo Prep run. Richards then served Texico to six consecutive points, the last five on aces, and the Wolverines had turned a one-point deficit into a 21-16 lead. Texico (25-0) seemed to click on all cylinders for the rest of the match as it capped a perfect season with a 17-25, 25-18, 25-15, 25-19 victory - and a second straight 2A title. "I'm not usually real aggressive with my serves. I don't know, I just felt like I had something in me," Richards said. "Everytime I served, I was just being aggressive. I was shocked." "Like last year, we lost the first game. But, hey, we were here to win three, not one, and the kids were able to come back," said Texico coach Mike Littlejohn, who finished his 29th year as the Wolverines coach with his sixth state title and first undefeated campaign. Navajo Prep (18-4) rolled in the first game, never trailing, as five different Eagles scored kills. After falling behind 14-10 in the second game, Prep roared back to a 16-14 lead as Nicole Crisp connected on three kills in her team's six-point run. That was all before Richards' serving run shifted the tenor of the match. "I think we wanted it, we really wanted it, but we just tried too hard to make every hit perfect and make everything go down," said Crisp, who finished with a match-high 15 kills. "This is the first time in a long time that we've even made it to state and we got pretty nervous when they got their momentum up." Animas (19-3) took the Class 1A title, the Panthers' first championship since 2000. As in the 2A and 3A finals, the eventual winners lost the first game. In this case, Animas rebounded to take a 19-25, 25-13, 26-24, 25-9 victory over Elida as the Panthers were led by senior Bianca Ramirez, freshman Merrilee Richardson and standout junior Jaci Hatch - who was sick and on the bench only one day before. | 