A Family tradition: For this volleyball star one more title would be a fitting ending

Sylvia, Isabella, Priscilla and Saskia Hernandez — four volleyball-playing sisters, 12 first-team All-Dade honors, five All-Dade Player of the Year awards …

And one last chance at high school glory.

Saskia, 18, is the youngest of the four sisters, all of whom have played for Westminster Christian.

On Saturday at 4 p.m., she and her Warriors teammates (22-0) will play Ocala’s Trinity Catholic (17-6) for the Class 3A state title in Fort Myers. The Warriors are ranked fifth in the state. Trinity Catholic is ranked 12th, but it beat third-ranked Bishop McLaughlin in a state semifinal.

It should be an interesting afternoon as both teams match up evenly in terms of size.

Sylvia, a 25-year-old who starred at the University of Miami, will be in Fort Myers on Saturday in her role as a Warriors assistant coach, and it could be a bittersweet day.

“It’s sad to see that we’re basically done,” Sylvia said. “Hopefully, we’ve left a legacy that will be remembered.”

That legacy has surely been secured. In the history of Dade/Broward high school sports, it’s hard to think of four siblings as successful in one sport as the Hernandez quartet in volleyball.

Certainly, the Edwards brothers — Doug, Steve and Allen — were great basketball players for Miami High and went on to star for Florida State, Miami and Kentucky, respectively.

But it’s pretty hard to find four siblings as good in their sport as:

Sylvia: She made All-Dade first team four times, she was the volleyball Player of the Year three times and Dade’s overall Athlete of the Year once. She also won a state title. At 5-11, she was a standout libero for UM.

Isabella: Known as Cici, 23, she made first-team All-Dade twice, won one state title and recently graduated from UM. She didn’t play college volleyball.

Priscilla: At age 20, she is a 5-8 junior starter on the UM team. In high school, she made first-team All-Dade three times and won one state title. She was also Dade’s Player of the Year once and the Athlete of the Year once.

Saskia: At 5-10, she broke with the family Hurricanes tradition — even her parents, Henry and Sylvia, went to UM — and committed to North Carolina State. She will sign with the Wolfpack on Wednesday. In high school, she has already made first-team All-Dade three times and has one state title, one Player of the Year award and one Athlete of the Year honor.

Last Friday, when Miami beat N.C. State in football, 44-41, Henry — who played baseball for the Hurricanes — was upset that Saskia was rooting for the Wolfpack.

“I told him, ‘Papi, I’m committed there!’” Saskia said. “But I love UM. I will forever cheer them on [also].”

On Saturday, all seven members of the Hernandez nuclear family, including older brother Henry Jr., will be in Fort Myers to root for Saskia and the Warriors.

Warriors coach Julie Doan, who led Westminster Christian to state titles in 2013 and 2016, will rely on Hernandez as well as 5-8 senior Sydney Bond, who has committed to Rider University.

Other Warriors standouts include 5-8 sophomore Alyah Cadavid; 5-7 sophomore Lamaya Fuller; 5-10 sophomore Emily Matias; 5-8 senior Amanda Tesserot; and eighth-grader Zoey Matias.

But of the girls on the roster, only Saskia has won a state title, and that happened when she was in the eighth grade.

“I felt like I was a little girl at that time,” Saskia said. “I wasn’t the big dog.”

Last year, Saskia was a “big dog,” and the Warriors made it to the state final before losing to Cardinal Mooney, which prevailed in five sets.

“They outworked us,” Saskia said. “They came in really hard. I guess they deserved to win. It was a great lesson for us.

“We’ve used that loss as fuel this year. We remind each other that we need to win this year.”

After all, it’s the last chance to add to the Hernandez Sisters state-title totals.

MATER ACADEMY

There are two other Dade/Broward girls’ volleyball teams playing for state titles this weekend:

Mater Academy (8-2) will play Tallahassee’s Leon (11-0) for the 6A championship on Saturday night at 7. Leon, ranked second in the state and a reigning state champion, is the favorite over 20th-ranked Mater.

Cardinal Gibbons

Cardinal Gibbons (7-3) will play Jacksonville’s Bishop Kenny (20-8) for the 4A championship on Friday at noon. Bishop Kenny (32) and Gibbons (101) are not highly rated. However, Gibbons has won a Florida-record 20 state titles, most recently in 2015. The main reason for the low ranking is that COVID-19 restrictions limited Gibbons to just four regular-season matches.

Water polo/Swimming

Gulliver senior and water polo player Alissa Pascual, a First-Team All-Dade Athlete in both sports, is set to sign with Stanford University. Pascual has also been a member of the National Honor Society since 2018.

“It has been my pleasure to coach Alissa for the past 7 years at Gulliver, where she’s raised the level of play for the entire state of Florida as our leading scorer,” said coach Carroll Vaughan. “She has been a consistently capable captain and role model for her teammates both in the pool as well as in the classroom.”

This story was originally published November 10, 2020 at 9:00 AM.