Mercy-Burlingame glimpsing the future

Mercy-Burlingame is in the process of raising funding via the “Building the Dream” project, a $27 million target to finance an on-campus Athletic and Student Life Center at Kohl Mansion. Mercy’s athletics teams have long played off campus. The school has raised 72% of the necessary funds to break ground on the project, according to the Mercy-Burlingame website. The date of the anticipated project launch has not been announced.

“I think the girls were appreciative of what they can have in the future,” Mercy head volleyball coach Ray Sum said following Saturday’s tourney at O’Dowd. “And I think this is the kind of gym they want to play (in). I was like: ‘Let’s win in this one, and we’ll win in ours, hopefully.’”

The Bears — Mercy changed its school mascot at the start of the 2023-24 school year, dropping the controversial “Crusaders” — made a run at the O’Dowd tourney title, but fell to Redwood in the finals. Mercy (14-5) went 4-1 on the day, winning pool play with victories over California-San Ramon, James Logan-Union City and Castro Valley, before defeating Washington-Fremont 25-21, 25-14 in the tournament semifinals.

Redwood (13-2), led by Cal Poly commit Jaden Hendrickson, swept past Mercy in the finals 25-20, 25-22. The 6-foot outside hitter Hendrickson solved a Mercy block that had dominated in four previous matches, totaling 12 kills, including nine in the decisive second set.

“She’s a clutch player,” Redwood head coach Loren Anderson said. “She comes through when we need her, and she knows when she’s needed.”

Sum said Mercy received an invite to the first-year tournament from Bishop O’Dowd head volleyball coach Nova Bramed.

While the players on the Mercy roster — six seniors and six juniors — might graduate before ground breaks on the Catholic private school’s athletics facilities project and will most certainly have graduated before it is completed, Saturday’s glimpse of the future showed them what is possible.

The Kohl Mansion campus has never hosted official high school athletics. Mercy does currently house an on-campus swimming pool, but it is not regulation size. Mercy’s water polo team practices and hosts “home” games off-campus. The same is true of the school’s on-campus tennis courts. With an insufficient number of courts, Mercy’s tennis team practices and hosts events predominantly at local community colleges. The school’s volleyball team practices and hosts games at Serra High School. The Mercy basketball team also plays off campus.

Sum said he’s confident Mercy will reach its target $27 million to realize the dream of new facilities, planned to include a regulation-sized gymnasium, a strength and conditioning room, team rooms, staff and trainer offices and a regulation size swimming pool.

“Sounds like it,” Sum said. “It’s just a matter of time and getting there. Sounds like we’re close, but not a finalized date.”

Competitively speaking, the Mercy volleyball team showed it deserves new digs with its performance last season. The program won the Central Coast Section Division IV championship, its first-ever section title, and finished as runners-up in the CIF Division III Northern California regional tournament.

Despite graduating several top players, the Bears are off to a hot start this season. A week prior to taking second place at O’Dowd, they finished runners-up at the Half Moon Bay volleyball tournament with a grueling 16-14 extra-points loss to champion Burlingame in the closing set of the finals.

The Mercy defense has been a work in progress, due to the 2023 graduation of libero Rocky Calderon, but the back row’s effort at O’Dowd — with both outside hitters, senior Juliana Mufarreh and junior Ava Cacao, playing six rotations, and senior Nicole Vo another sharp defensive option — is showing promise toward anchoring another potential CCS run.

“I think they played really good,” Mercy middle blocker Sadie McCulloch said. “They never really gave up. Even if we were down, they always tried as hard as they could to get the ball up, and I think that’s really important.”

McCulloch is one of a duo of junior middle blockers. Along with Mia Ferdinand, the two are keeping with a blocking tradition that has become synonymous with Sum’s Mercy teams since he took over the program in 2021.

“Focusing on the blocks again, like we did last season,” Sum said. “We got some pretty good, solid blocks in today’s match against Redwood. So, that helped out.”

McCulloch totaled two blocks in the Game 2 finale against Redwood, in a match that saw the Bears leading in the middle game of both sets. It was an unorthodox defensive dig that stood out for McCulloch, though, a sharp Redwood swing that struck her in the face then bounded upward and stayed in play to prolong the rally.

“It’s OK,” McCulloch said. “I’m still alive.”

Mercy opens West Bay Athletic League Foothill Division play Thursday, traveling to Menlo School for a 6:30 p.m. start. Menlo swept the season series last year, but Mercy still rallied to tie them for second place in the final WBAL Foothill standings.