Daily Journal Volleyball Player of the Year: Notre Dame-Belmont’s Gia Rivera

And, yes, while the 6-2 Rivera is closing in on choosing a school to continue her storied career at the collegiate level, the West Bay Athletic League’s kills queen and Co-Most Valuable Player is still uncommitted.

“Right now, yeah, I’m uncommitted,” Rivera said. “I have a couple exciting things coming up in the next couple weeks, and I’m looking to be committed in the next month or two.”

Adding another honor to her resume, Rivera has been named the Daily Journal Volleyball Player of the Year, an award for which she’s been in the running all four of her varsity seasons — and with good reason, as her numbers this year were on par with each of the last three.

Rivera led the WBAL with 486 kills this year, nearly equaling her career-high of 502 from her sophomore season of 2023-24. She averaged 5.1 kills per set, equaling her total last year as a junior. She served as proficiently as she ever has with an 83.7% while totaling 62 aces, one off her career-best. And while she didn’t achieve a double-double average like she did last year, she still paced NDB with 16.2 kills and 8.0 digs per match.

“She’s obviously a great player,” NDB’s first-year head coach Mark Piorkowski said. “She can do everything on the court — great attacker, great passer, great teammate. She has all the tools to be successful at the next level.”

Piorkowski took over the program this season for legendary head coach Jen Agresti, who ran the program from 2012-24. Agresti led the Tigers to four Central Coast Section Division IV championships and, along with the program’s all-time kills leader Katie Smoot, took NDB the NDB’s one-and-only CIF Division IV state championship crown in 2015.

“I was really sad when she left,” Rivera said of her former coach. “I was heartbroken, personally, because I always thought I would end my Notre Dame career with her as a coach. But I was also a hundred percent supportive of her decision.”

Rivera benefitted from the best of both worlds, though. Not only did she play for Agresti for three years, as well as work with Smoot, who returned to the program as an assist coach in 2024. This year, with Piorkowski at the helm, Rivera got to work with another heavy-hitting San Mateo County legend, new assistant coach Hailey Merkes, aka “The Blasta from Alaska,” who played at Half Moon Bay from 2013-16.

“I can not speak highly enough about Coach Mark and Coach Hailey,” Rivera said. “They shaped me into the player I am, even in that short amount of time.”

Piorkowski and Merkes immediately leaned on Rivera as a team leader, which made sense. She was one of eight seniors on NDB’s roster. Sure, Piorkowski knew the weapon Rivera was, and that he could rely on her to hardly ever come off the court. What he raves about most, though, almost as though he’s grateful for making his adjustment to the varsity coaching ranks go so smoothly, is Rivera’s leadership.

“She’s got one of the fastest shoulders you’ll see, and is never afraid to use it,” Piorkowski said. “You can’t really teach what she has. ... She just has a heavy swing. ... I think that’s what’s going to help her at the next level is she can hit just as hard as those girls you see on TV, playing in the NCAA tournament.”

Piorkowski got to witness that leadership when Rivera took on the roll of an additional coach in his first week at the helm, when NDB traveled to Huntington Beach to play in the Dave Mohs Tournament in Huntington Beach. Piorkowski said even though Rivera never mentioned it, he could tell she was nursing a sore knee. So, he opted to sit her for the final match of the tournament, Sept. 6, against Crescenta Valley.

It would be the only match Rivera missed all year, yet she didn’t push back.

“She embraced the leadership role she had and was cheering for everyone on the court,” Piorkowski said. “She could have cared about herself and wanting to be on the court ... and be top in the state, blah, blah. But she still put the team in front of everything else.”

One week later, at the Varsity Panther Challenge at Presentation High School in San Jose, Rivera was back on the court to lead the Tigers to the tournament championship. It was during that tourney Piorkowski witnessed precisely why one of the most common phrases in Rivera’s vernacular is “one hundred percent,” when the senior made a crazy hustle dig by diving into the crowd to keep a ball in play for senior outside hitter Reagan Raff to send over to score the kill.

“And everyone loses their mind,” Piorkowski said. “But that extra effort was so crucial.”

With NDB rotating between two liberos in senior Adrianna Chu and sophomore Piper Ventura for much of the season, Rivera was the Tigers’ most consistent anchor on defense.

“Also, I’ve just kind of been trained through high school to get as many touches as I can, nothing hits the floor,” Rivera said. “[Agresti] always told me that.”

The defensive brilliance kept Rivera on the court playing all six rotations, where she was a scoring threat from all three front-row positions, as well as from the back row — a workload in which she takes a lot of pride.

“I’ve always been taught that I have to work hard for my playing time, and it’s never given, it’s always earned,” Rivera said. “I’ve always just been very motivated and earn my playing time, and my spot at my position for all my hard work. I one hundred percent take pride in it and I think it comes form a mindset of I don’t want to sit on the bench.”

Rivera led the Tigers to a 22-8 overall record, including an 9-3 mark in WBAL play, good for second place behind league champion Sacred Heart Prep. All three categories marked the best results of Rivera’s varsity career.

And while Rivera’s fourth straight trip to the CCS playoffs ended in a first-round loss to Harker-San Jose, she again exhibited those sincere leadership skills as she and her fellow seniors approached Piorkowski after the game to request, even though their season was over, to hold one more practice so as their high school volleyball careers could last one more day.

“Obviously, it’s super sad for the seniors, for all of us to be leaving Notre Dame soon,” Rivera said. “But it was an incredible season.

“Having eight seniors is also what kept us motivated too,” she said. “It’s everybody’s last season there, so we wanted to end as best as we can.”