St. Pius X-St. Matthias players celebrate a point as they play Romona Convent in their girls volleyball game on at Ramona Convent in Alhambra on Thursday September 19, 2024. (Photo by Keith Durflinger, Contributing Photographer)

DOWNEY – It’s crunch time for the St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy High School girls volleyball team, as they enter the final two-plus weeks of the season.

With six matches remaining in the regular season schedule, the Warriors find themselves in fourth place in the Santa Fe League. Should they keep that standing, they will be guaranteed a playoff spot.

PMA will be aiming for a second consecutive appearance in the playoffs, after a few seasons away from CIF post-season action.

A big reason for the turnaround these last two seasons was the hiring of 25-year old Ariel Guzman-Avila. He was originally hired to run the girls soccer team, and is entering his third year as head varsity volleyball coach. Guzman-Avila has led both the boys and girls (Co-Champs) soccer teams to Camino Real League titles last season.

“It has been a real honor to have grown with this (volleyball) group and have brought balance and stability and honestly, a chance to compete and make a playoff push for the last two seasons,” said Guzman-Avila, whose dad, Chris, was added as an assistant varsity coach and head JV coach this season for volleyball.

“My hope for the future is that this keeps growing and opportunities for these student-athletes start to grow and exist past PMA and hopefully getting these kids to continue playing into the next level in college.”

After finishing the first half of Santa Fe League play this past week with a 3-0 loss (18-25, 15-25, 21-25) to first-place Ramona Convent, the Warriors opened the second half with a 3-0 sweep (25-8, 25-20, 25-13) of San Gabriel Mission Monday (Sept. 23).

Leading the way with kills against Mission was junior outside hitter Vera Vasquez with six, along with five each from senior outside hitter Monica Boone and junior middle blocker Stephanie Zesati. Junior setter/opposite Olivia Haddad led with 19 assists.

“The Santa Fe league is interestingly competitive amongst the top four teams,” Guzman-Avila said. “Anyone can beat anyone on any given night. Last Thursday’s game against Ramona was a demonstration of how capable we can be at this level. We’re not too far behind from the top three schools.

Monday against San Gabriel Mission was one of those league games where we just needed to take care of business and continue to make that playoff push.

With last years’ quick exit in the wild card round to Artesia, all the players have one goal in mind: to earn a first-round playoff game and advance further.

“Last year, it was a tough loss,” Vasquez said. “It really hurt me, and it was tough. I just took that energy that reflected off from that and I’m just putting that energy into it and bring a ring home.”

She has used that energy in a big way and is the “kills leader” for the Warriors this season. Vasquez, along with Boone, have accounted for 70% of the teams kills to date.

In addition to Vasquez and Boone, the team leader is senior captain and libero Samantha Bayardo, along with captains Zoe Zamudio and Junior Eva Godoy.

“They bring strong leadership to the program and set a fantastic example for not only those on Varsity but to those on JV and frosh-soph as well,” added Guzman-Avila.

Newly hired athletic director James Covell said of Bayardo, “I will say our libero is currently being actively recruited by UC Merced. We switched her to play opposite setter last game (against Ramona Convent).

“All varsity members have been at the school since their freshman year, which is a rarity these days.”

Bayardo is the team leader in digs.

Three-year varsity player Stephanie Zesati also said of Bayardo: “We just get down on ourselves sometimes,” Zesati said. “She leads the team pretty well and not all of us have that volleyball IQ like Sam and Zoe (Zamudio). Sam is like our third coach in a way and coach on the floor. Not only like tells us how to fix our mistakes, but mentally stay in the game.”

Guzman-Avila summed up the progress of the volleyball program as a whole saying, “Our season has been a growing experience. Each student-athlete that we have in the program is playing volleyball because they love the sport, we don’t share some of the prestige that some of our other sports at PMA have in terms of transfers, but day in and day out these student-athletes have given their all and honestly, we cannot ask any more than that.”

PMA took on third-place St. Paul (6-1) Thursday, Sept. 25 (results not available at press time).

What they said:

PMA Asst. coach Chris Guzman: “We’re definitely in the hunt and every game from now on is a playoff game, so we have to win.

(Ramona) is a tough team. We made a lot of mistakes and thought we should of hung in there a little bit better.”

Samantha Bayardo, libero, Sr.: “I think that, as a team sport, that everyone is in it, everyone cares and trying to put their heart into it. I feel that my team wasn’t giving that, and I feel responsible as team captain to get them fired up to let them know that they’re in this game and we can win this and just motivating everyone else.”

Warriors eye playoffs for second straight year