L.A. Baptist Tags Along in Sweep by Notre Dame

NORTH HILLS — Forget the locker room theatrics. No rah-rah speeches here.

Motivation came from a different source for the Notre Dame High girls’ volleyball team before a nonleague match Tuesday night against L.A. Baptist.

They played tag. Freeze tag, actually.

Then they entered the L.A. Baptist gym and swept their way to a 15-9, 16-14, 17-15 victory.

“None of us like to run, so we play tag,” said outside hitter Kathryn Martin, who had five kills and sat out most of the third game because of a cold. “Our team’s pretty kick-back.”

And adept at coming from behind. Notre Dame (2-0) trailed in each game, but rallied.

Notre Dame was down in the first, 8-3, before rattling off a 12-1 run that included two kills and an ace from Martin.

In the second game, the deficit was 14-11 before L.A. Baptist (1-1) self-destructed in a cloud of service and hitting errors.

Notre Dame was up, 14-8, in the third game before L.A. Baptist fought off five match points and even took a 15-14 lead on three consecutive aces by Becky McGuire.

The answer for Notre Dame came on Nevada Blonstein’s side-out kill, two hitting errors by L.A. Baptist and a block by Hilda Osmanian to end the match.

“I thought we’d take that last one,” said L.A. Baptist Coach Sue Newcomb, who had 12 kills from Kristen Jensen. “It just didn’t happen.”

Osmanian, primarily a setter last season, is more involved in the attack and finished with seven kills, as did Briana Hadfield.

Still, all wasn’t perfect for Notre Dame, which opens Mission League play against Alemany on Oct. 8 and faces league power Harvard-Westlake on Oct. 10.

“This was one of our worst games,” Osmanian said. “But even when we’re playing bad, we can still pull through.”

As for the Wolverines. . . .

“From the minute we started summer training, we started thinking about them,” Osmanian said. “We’re not underestimating them at all.”