SOUTHERN SECTION 3-A GIRLS VOLLEYBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS : La Habra Rallies, Finally Wins a Title

HUNTINGTON BEACH — For all the impressive girls’ volleyball teams and all the standout players produced by La Habra High School, the program had always lacked one thing--a Southern Section championship.

Saturday, the team that had been to two Southern Section finals in the 1980s, that had won seven Freeway League championships in this decade--at one point, winning 50 consecutive league matches--finally took care of that one oversight by defeating Agoura, 9-15, 16-14, 15-12, 10-15, 15-7, in the 3-A final at Marina High School.

The difference this time may have been that La Habra had something it didn’t have in the other finals: A little luck.

It was in the fifth and deciding game; La Habra had built an early 7-2 lead, but watched Agoura rally to cut it to 8-7.

La Habra had already blown a 10-0 lead in the second game and had fallen behind, 11-10, before rallying to win, 16-14. The Highlanders had lost the first game, their first loss in the playoffs, so a loss in game two would have been disastrous.

And disaster seemed imminent in the fifth game with Agoura serving and La Habra desperately trying to control a ball which, because of a couple of poor Highlander passes, was sailing out of bounds. That would have tied the score, 8-8, but from her outside hitting position, Zrinka Kristich, all 6-foot-5 of her, turned her back to the net, stretched her right arm as far as it would go and slapped the ball over her head and barely over the net tape.

Stunned Agoura players scrambled to get to the ball, but their efforts only ended in a side out for La Habra.

From that point on, it was all La Habra and Melissa Clements. After an Agoura error made the score, 9-7, Clements, a 6-foot middle blocker, made two blocks and a kill to put her team ahead, 12-7. Kristich followed that with a kill of her own, followed by another Clements kill to put La Habra within a point of the championship, 14-7.

The Highlanders won it when Agoura’s Christy Janssen hit long.