East Nicolaus reflects on volleyball 3-peat

Nov. 8—Tuesday night as the East Nicolaus High girls volleyball team was celebrating its second California Interscholastic Federation Northern California Regional win in the last three seasons, East Nicolaus head volleyball coach Donald Takeuchi said it had been a crazy last few days.

That's because East Nicolaus needed its first "reverse sweep," in the Takeuchi era to overtake Trinity and complete the 3-peat in the Northern Section Division V championship game Saturday afternoon in Foothill (Palo Cedro).

The top-seeded Spartans were in an 0-2 hole in the best-of-five match and rallied for three straight wins to capture the match in five for the elusive 3-peat — the first one in the section since 2017.

East Nicolaus's personnel remained in a state of shock about Saturday's NSCIF championship.

"We always end up losing the first set, it's just our thing," Setter Addy Tagala said. "Then we lost the second set I was like 'Oh this might be a bit of a problem.'"

In the third set, East Nicolaus began to change the narrative.

"We put it in our heads that it does not matter what (set) it is 'let's get this third ring,'" Outside hitter Tiare Faupula said. "For us seniors we were like 'No, we are not losing our senior section game, this is not it. It was definitely scary coming back from losing two sets in a row but after we won the (third) we were like 'We're in it.'"

When the time came to celebrate the 3-peat, Faupula said things began to change at East Nicolaus High School.

"We've been so stuck on football (but) now that we have won section three times in a row they finally are looking at us like 'Our girls are good,'" Faupula said. "Small town big dream and everyone is starting to recognize us ... It's nice."