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Archer Varsity Volleyball Victorious Over Vistamar

The Brentwood Archer School for Girls varsity volleyball team beat the Vistamar School of El Segundo Tuesday night and will go on to play Silver Valley of Yermo in Mar Vista on Thursday at 4 p.m.

The Archer School for Girls won a four set match over Vistamar School of El Segundo Tuesday night at Santa Monica College in the opening round of the CIF 5AA volleyball playoffs.  

Archer improved its overall record to 14-4 and has now advanced to the "sweet sixteen" of the section playoffs.  The second round game will be played against Silver Valley of Yermo, Thursday at 7:00pm in the Windward School Gym in Mar Vista.

The 7:30 p.m. start time Tuesday provided the Archer girls a chance to enjoy a pre-game dinner at a private home, similar to the "private home" dinners President Obama has attended in the Brentwood area lately, except the city streets were not shut down and we didn't have to cancel any games due to the visit.  

Oh, and the Maile family did not charge $50,000 per plate.  The team did, however, arrive in a yellow bus in full warm-up gear, which the president might consider in his future visits.  After dinner, it was time to make their way to Archer's "home away from home," Santa Monica College (SMC).

A large crowd filed in to the main court at SMC to see a competitive first round game, Vistamar came in to the game with a 14-8 record.  Archer students Ellie Beckman (senior) and Kathleen Kelso (sophomore) sang a beautiful rendition of the national anthem to get things started.  Vistamar took an early lead in the first set, but came up short as Archer established a middle attack and won 25-19.  The Vikings took set two 29-27, but then Archer rolled off two more set wins, 25-23 and 25-20 to move on in the single elimination playoffs.  Senior middle hitter Coco Maurice was a force at the net, finishing with 8 blocks and 12 kills.  Senior setter Leslie Baker dished out 30 assists in the victory.

On Thursday, the girls will face the Silver Valley High School Trojans of Yermo, a team that rolled over Baptist Christian of Hemet in their first round game, three sets to zero.  Silver Valley is led by their "big three" combination of senior setter Kaci Allen, senior outside hitter Brenna Foster and junior middle blocker Darian Rubino.  All three were instrumental in leading the Trojans to a 15-7 mark this season, their best season on record.  

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The school is located in the Mojave Desert, and has approximately the same enrollment of girls as Archer. Sixty-five percent of the families are military related because the U.S. Army Ft. Irwin National Training Center is nearby.  

Silver Valley had won the coin flip to host the second round game, but was forced by CIF policy to give up hosting rights due to the school using a non-approved ball in the first round. True story.

If Archer is able to win and advance to the quarterfinals, it will mark the furthest any Archer volleyball team has gone in the CIF playoffs.  No Archer athletic team has made it to a CIF Final Four (last year the school's basketball team advanced to the CIF quarterfinals).  

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The CIF 5AA volleyball quarterfinals will be played on Saturday at 7 p.m.  The location will be determined by coin flip (barring any "ballgate" incidents) on Friday morning.

The Archer volleyball team roster includes:  Seniors Leslie Baker and Coco Maurice, juniors Jessica Culotti, Elle Keoghan, Ciena Lennon, Lindsay Levesque, Marian Maile, Katie Moray, sophomores Kirsten Avila and Maia Barnett and freshmen Lauryn Brame and Ava Mandelbaum.  The Coaches are Jonathan Lotz, Anthony Mezzavilla and Caitlin Lawson.

For game updates and information be sure to follow us on twitter @ArcherAthletics.

Denny Lennon is athletic director of the Archer School for Girls.

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