If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And again. And again. And again.
That’s the lesson that the girls’ beach volleyball team at Torrey Pines High School learned recently as they won the fifth annual California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) San Diego Section Open Division championship in their sport.
This was the fifth straight year that the team made the finals, but the first time they reached the peak by winning the tournament.
“I’m super proud of our girls and how hard they worked and how much they trusted our system and our program, and just happy that they accomplished their goal of winning the Open Division championship,” head coach Sean Pope said.
Not only had Torrey Pines come in second the previous four years, but the team they played for the championship each time was the same: Cathedral Catholic High School in Carmel Valley.
But this year, the Falcons (23-3) managed to break through and defeated the Lady Dons (14-2) to take the championship with a 3-2 victory on May 9.
“We came together and stuck to our guns and were able to just get across the finish line,” Pope said, referring to both the championship match and season as a whole. “Super, super excited for our girls.”
Pope said his team’s approach to the season wasn’t dramatically different than in years past, but attributed the team’s ultimate success in part to a few personnel changes that paid off. “I think that the combination of a couple of new players and a couple of players returning to our program, that combination just kind of gelled,” he said.
Pope described his team’s effort by saying, “They worked really hard all year. And a couple girls did step up in the very end and just took us to where we need to be.”
Those two girls, he said, were junior Kelly Randolph and senior Samantha Krystkowiak.
“Without them, we wouldn’t be able to get where we were,” Pope said. “They were our two leaders. They worked the hardest.”
That being said, Pope also said his players stood together as a unit. This cohesion was among the keys to their success.
“We’re a team. It’s not an individual sport,” he said. “We had goals that we wanted to accomplish, and most of those goals include ‘team.’”
He cited other factors that any team needs to be successful. “Working together, trusting your coaches, trusting your captains to do what’s right for you, having a plan from the start of the season to the end of the season and building on that and having the athletes buy into the program.”
He continued, “There’s definitely bumps in the road along the way, but one of our goals is to be patient. You’ve gotta be patient and trust the process. And our past record has shown that we can get to that ultimate goal, now that we’ve crossed that finish line.”
