Prior to Tuesday night’s regular season finale, the Pajaro Valley girls’ volleyball team had already clinched the Pacific Coast Athletic League Santa Lucia Division title.
It was in the bag, as they say.
One thing missing was the cherry on top to finish with a perfect 14-0 record in league play. The Grizzlies accomplished that part following a victory over Ceiba in three sets 25-9, 25-16, 25-22 in front of the home crowd.
“Honestly, we went into the season not really thinking that this was gonna happen,” PV junior Olivia Contreras said. “Being able to experience getting a whole banner in the gym and being able to say I was a part of that is just surreal.”
Pajaro Valley High Principal Todd Wilson sweetened the evening up by presenting the team with a championship banner that reads PCAL Santa Lucia Champions.
“It’s still a shock to me,” PV head coach Jenn Jacinto said. “Actually being able to see it and know that we actually did it, it’s still very shocking and still kind of mind blowing to me now.”
The new banner will hang inside the gymnasium next to the 2009 Monterey Bay League banner, which was the program’s first-ever league crown.
“It’s amazing. I love being able to play with my teammates and to see how everybody improves, and to also try and improve myself,” Contreras said. “I would say we played pretty good this season, but I definitely think that we can improve a lot more. But overall, I’m in shock.”
Contreras had five kills and three aces in Tuesday night’s win. Teammate junior Jaqueline Alvarez-Zavala had three kills and two aces, while junior Virgina Escobar contributed a pair of kills and two aces for the Grizzlies.
Other key contributors to this year’s success include team captains senior Aaliyah Chavez and junior Monique Ayala, and freshman Karely Alvarado.
“It just shows how much volleyball has grown in these past couple of years,” Jacinto said.
Jacinto mentioned how Pajaro Valley still has a bit of stigma in terms of athleticism, and in this school specifically. In just her fourth season, she’s taken a program that went from being doormats to league champs.
“You can see how driven our athletes are and how much they do have the passion, and desire to actually push themselves to reach this level of league champs, no matter what division it is,” Jacinto said.
Contreras said the biggest difference this year is they’ve been motivated since the beginning of the season.
“I feel like in past years we haven’t really been motivated because we go into it thinking that we aren’t gonna win,” she said. “From the beginning of the season, we’ve been saying we’re gonna get a banner. I think just our motivation and dedication to it is what helped.”
Jacinto said her vision and goal was to build a program whether it meant winning or getting championship banners.
“Always in the back of my mind was the growth and improvement of a program is probably most important,” she said. “Coming into this season, I would say specifically, we had the goal to win no matter what. We didn’t want to share the pie.”
Pajaro Valley finished with a 17-9 overall record after starting the 2024 campaign with five consecutive losses, including a five set battle against cross-town rival Watsonville.
Since then, the Grizzlies have gone on win streaks of eight, five, and their current one of four which started with a league-clinching five-set win over Oakwood on Oct. 21.
“We were definitely messing up quite a bit,” Contreras said about the second match against Oakwood. “We were getting mad at each other but then I feel like we came together at the end. We really got on each other and played as a team because I feel like we played kind of separately in that game.”
The Grizzlies will have to play as a pack if they want to make it far in the upcoming Central Coast Section playoffs. They earned the No. 13 seed in the Division III bracket.
Pajaro Valley hosts No. 4 Santa Cruz in the first round on Saturday at 7pm.
“Definitely expecting to see some pretty hard teams,” Contreras said. “It’s gonna be tough, but I really do think that if we push hard enough and play our best, we can go pretty far in it.”
