Warrior girls volleyball season ends in CIF quarterfinals

Fallbrook High School’s girls volleyball team ended its 2007 season with a loss to Poway November 9 in the CIF Division I quarterfinals.

The Titans won the match at Poway in four games, with Fallbrook winning the third game by an overscore.

“Our star was hurt and unable to play, and it appeared that the rest of the team played a little scared because of that,” said Fallbrook coach Galen Tomlinson. “We still had the weapons to win it.”

The star to which Tomlinson referred is Shelly Morton, who injured her knee in the Warriors’ first-round win November 7. “They got a little dependent on her, and without her they crumbled,” Tomlinson said.

Fallbrook finished the regular season with an 18-7 record, including a 5-3 mark in Avocado League play which tied for second in the conference standings. The Warriors finished second in the San Diego Fall Classic tournament, although the fires cancelled a week’s worth of play and the Warriors also withdrew from the Scripps Ranch Tournament due to the Scholastic Aptitude Test that weekend which would have cost Fallbrook several players. “There wasn’t as much volleyball played this year as in years past,” Tomlinson said.

The fires also cancelled practices as well as games from October 22 through October 29. “Our season kind of got pretty shot with the fires,” Tomlinson said.

The Warriors earned a first-round home playoff match against Patrick Henry and advanced with a 25-19, 25-11, 25-22 victory. “We played well,” Tomlinson said of the first-round match.

Fallbrook lost the first game of the quarterfinal match by a 25-22 score, and Poway also took the second game by a 25-15 margin. The Warriors avoided a sweep with a 28-26 victory in the third game, but Poway earned a trip to the semifinals with a 25-15 win in the fourth contest.

“Just a disappointing end. I had high hopes and projected a lot better finish to our season than this, but when kids get hurt there’s not a lot you can do about it,” Tomlinson said. “We had some tremendous athletes. Just was never able to put the whole puzzle together.”