'Toppers get No. 9 seed in 4A tourney

The Los Alamos Hilltopper volleyball team earned a surprisingly low seed in this year’s Class 4A state tournament.

John McHale

Hilltopper Danielle Ortiz digs up a hit attempt during Saturday’s District 2-4A tournament championship match. Los Alamos won 3-1 over the Española Valley Sundevils. Los Alamos now advances to the state Class 4A playoffs where it is the No. 9 seed and will play No. 1-seeded Piedra Vista and No. 8-seeded Las Cruces Centennial starting Thursday morning at the Santa Ana Star Center.

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The brackets for the state volleyball tournaments were released Sunday by the New Mexico Activities Association.

Los Alamos’ District 2 regular season and tournament championships didn’t seem to impress the seeding committee. Los Alamos finished as the No. 9 overall seed.

Volleyball pool play will be Thursday at the Santa Ana Star Center in Rio Rancho. Los Alamos is matched up in pool A play with No. 8 seed Las Cruces Centennial and the No. 1 overall seed, Piedra Vista.

Piedra Vista (20-1), which won the District 1 championship, defeated Los Alamos 3-1 Sept. 15 in Farmington.
The Panthers’ only loss this season was to Class 5A Cleveland in late September.

Centennial (18-3) was the District 3 champion and has won 12 straight matches heading into Thursday’s pool play round. Interestingly, Centennial didn’t play one match this season that went longer than three sets.

The runner-up in both the District 2 regular season race and tournament, Española Valley, was only afforded the 12th and last seed in the 4A playoffs.

Los Alamos defeated Española Valley 3-1 in the district tournament championship match Saturday night at Griffith Gymnasium.

The Hilltoppers (15-6) came back after dropping the second set 21-25 to win the third set 25-12 and hold Española Valley off in the final set 25-22.

Erin Kirk had 15 spike kills to pace the Hilltoppers in the match. Claire Stewart finished with 11 spike kills and Sam Fenner had 10. Ella O’Donnell had 4 ace serves and Danielle Ortiz had 3 aces.

Los Alamos finished ranked eighth in the most recent MaxPreps.com Class 4A rankings, one spot above Centennial.

Pool play starts at 10:45 a.m. Thursday. The second and third finishers from each pool will play an opening round match Thursday afternoon while the top pool team will get a bye to Friday’s quarterfinal round.

The tournament continues through Saturday at the Santa Ana Star Center.

Here are the match-ups for the 2012 Class 4A state volleyball playoffs (seedings are in parentheses):

Pool A

(1) Piedra Vista
(8) Centennial
(9) Los Alamos

Pool B

(2) Abq. Academy
(7) Roswell
(10) Valencia

Pool C

(3) Goddard
(6) Los Lunas
(11) Farmington

Pool D

(4) St. Pius X
(5) Artesia
(12) Española Valley