Westminster Christian volleyball earns another chance to snap state title drought
Westminster Christian started fast, but the Warriors are more concerned about how they finish.
Westminster battled its way to a sixth consecutive state championship game berth Tuesday after turning back Naples First Baptist, 3-1, in a Class 2A girls’ volleyball state semifinal at Polk State College.
Westminster (21-5) will face Ocala Trinity Catholic for the 2A state championship Wednesday at 7 p.m. Trinity advanced after beating Clearwater Central Catholic 3-1.
“I am so excited. I’ve actually been waiting for this moment since the beginning of the season,” said Westminster senior outside hitter Zoey Matias, now in her sixth varsity season with the team. “I knew we were going to be in this spot. I knew we were going to be here. I knew we were going to win the game today. I had confidence in my team.”
Westminster roared out of the starting gate, winning the first two games 25-19 and 25-14. But First Baptist (23-5) fought back in a nip-and-tuck Game 3 before pulling out a 26-28 win. That’s when Westminster passed its gut-check and made quick work of First Baptist, 25-11, in the deciding Game 4.
“After the third set, I brought my team in, and I could see their faces were a little bit off,” Matias said. “So I said, ‘We need to change our faces and our body language. We have the momentum and we are going to win the fourth set, and we just need to play our game.’”
Westminster junior outside hitter Gigi Artiles, who is also in her sixth season on the varsity roster, said she senses a state title is near.
“I feel like this year is different. We’ve been training harder and harder. We are more of a family and we are all very connected,” Artiles said. “We all talked about it before the fourth set to start off extra strong. We wanted to be consistent the whole time.”
This past year, Westminster finished as the 3A state runner-up after dropping the title match to Tampa Carrollwood Day. It was the fifth-consecutive season Westminster finished as state runners-up. Westminster won the 2016 5A and the 2013 3A state championships.
Although it has not won a championship during its streak of reaching the state final, Westminster is in elite company as far as such streaks go. It is the most consecutive state finals appearances by a Miami-Dade County team and third-longest by a South Florida team behind only Fort Lauderdale Cardinal Gibbons, which advanced to seven in a row from 1983-1989 and won six championships during that span, and Boca Raton Olympic Heights, which won seven titles in a row from 1996-2002.
Westminster Christian coach Julie Doan Kurenuma, who is now in her 20th season with the Warriors, said reaching that state tournament has become a staple for the program but the team is really anxious to win the title.
“There are teams and players and coaches that would give anything to do what we have done, and we don’t want to take anything away from that. But why would we be OK with second place when we are here and we want to win first,” Kurenuma said.