Burlingame keeps pace in tough Bay volleyball race

After dropping the first set, however, the Panthers (6-3 PAL Bay, 13-8 overall) came roaring back, backed by a pivotal Game 3 in which they scored 20 team kills, en route to a 19-25, 25-22, 25-23, 25-20 victory.

“I don’t know that we’ve had that many (kills in a single set),” Burlingame head coach K’Lynn Solt said. “Although we have consistently had a lot of kills. We have a lot of strong players. But, yeah, this is probably our No. 1.”

With the win, Burlingame stays deadlocked in a third-place tie with Hillsdale in back of first-place Menlo-Atherton, second-place Aragon, and one game ahead of fifth-place Carlmont.

The Panthers used 15 different players and rotated them early and often. Senior opposite hitter Malina Baker heated up in the third set and finished with a career-high 16 kills. Senior outside hitter Emmy Sharp added 13 kills, while sophomore Keegan Boyse debuted in the second set and went on to total nine kills.

Mateo (0-7, 3-9) overcame a big deficit to go up in Game 1. Burlingame jumped out to a 16-9 lead in the opener, riding the service brilliance of Sharp. She went on a 4-point service run, all via aces.

“There are only a couple of servers that serve top-spin jumpers in the women’s,” San Mateo head coach Andoni Javellana said. “It’s a heavy serve and it just has to be approached differently. So, after talking to them a little bit, they made a good adjustment and learned how to pass it.”

Once the Bearcats got Sharp off the service line, they went on a 9-1 run. Tied 18-18, Mateo junior Lisa Yokemura scored off a left-side fade to spark a 7-1 run to end the set.

“Our team, sometimes we get a good lead in the beginning and we kind of let it trail off,” Baker said. “But I think we did a good job, after the first set, realizing we can’t do that anymore. We have to stay up the entire game.”

Game 2 saw a similar story, with Burlingame letting an 18-14 lead slip away. But the Panthers responded to a 5-1 Mateo run with a 5-1 run of their own, with a clutch kill from Sharp — shifting over to the right side — to give them the lead for good at 19-18.

“That happened to be where we were in serve receive,” Solt said. “And I think that worked out really well.”

In Game 3, Baker got going. Big time.

Mateo middle blocker Valerie Bruk had been putting up a dominant block. At 5-10, the junior doesn’t look like the most intimidating. But she went for five match blocks, including four in the first two sets.

“She’s actually one of the smaller middle blockers in the league,” Javellana said. “And people look at her and they don’t really anticipate she’s going to get up like that. And she gets up pretty high. She’s a very strong blocker.”

Baker, though, solved the Mateo block with an array of tip shots. The 5-10 senior didn’t play varsity volleyball last year, instead choosing to focus on the beach game with the Santa Cruz Beach Volleyball club. In returning to the Panthers this year, her beach chops have served her well. Especially Thursday, with six kills and a block in Game 3, and seven more kills over the last two sets.

“I feel like that game felt really good,” Baker said. “Especially with being able to be smarter about where I was placing it, being able to move the block around and making the other side guess where I was trying to go, it felt really good.”

Bruk and senior outside hitter Paris Quinney totaled nine kills apiece for Mateo, while Yokemura recorded a team-high 10 kills.

Burlingame libero Eloise Ulrich fueled many of the prolonged rallies, totaling a career-high 27 digs.

“She can pick everything up,” Solt said. “She’s been a great asset for this team.”