ORANGE — A tradition for the Hilmar High School volleyball team has been to look up at the pennants hanging from the walls whenever they walk into Strom Gymnasium. It was fun last year, said many of the players, but this season brought some bitterness.

The Yellowjackets experienced heartbreak in CIF State Championship matches in both 2018 and 2024, as they were on the wrong end of reverse sweeps in each instance. There was always a feeling among the nine players that returned from last season that, while the Northern California crown was cool, the season still ended in a loss despite being in the driver’s seat through two sets.

In the Division V state title game on Friday against Southern California champion Elsinore at Santiago Canyon College, the Lady ‘Jackets found themselves in a similar situation — up 2-0 following 26-24 and 25-16 set victories. 

Hilmar head coach Patti Harris, in her 16th season at the helm, made sure her team remembered that nothing is a given. “Keep the pressure, keep the pressure, keep the pressure. That was the message to the team the entire time,” Harris said. “Girls volleyball can swing so fast, you just never know what can happen until you have 25 points.”

The assignment was well understood, as the Yellowjackets, up 21-19 against a desperate Elsinore team, scored four straight to clinch the first state volleyball title in school history. The program’s 27th win of the season also its fourth sweep of the postseason between the Sac-Joaquin Section and Northern California tournaments. 

“I am so, so happy for this team,” Harris said. “From the start of the season, since we got together in June, these girls, from the players to my incredible coaching staff, have all dedicated so much time to this program. It’s a wonderful feeling to be rewarded with this. We’ll have this banner up in the gym now, and the girls can look up at it for years to come and say ‘That’s ours.’” 

The match point came on a thunderous block by senior middle hitter Emma Gomes. It was Gomes’ 10th point of the afternoon, the other nine coming on kills.

The emphatic and convincing ending was a far cry from what transpired in the opening set, which was a back-and-forth frenzy in its final stages. In fact, the ‘Jackets were losing for much of the first half, succumbing to a flurry of hits out of bounds and net violations. After the game was tied at 16 following a kill from junior Reese Ahlem, the teams tied four times and exchanged the lead five times. Down 24-23, Ahlem took over by tying the set with a block and giving her team a lead with a kill. Freshman hitter Johanna Lawler clinched the set with a clutch ace serve.

From there, the Yellowjackets refused to be denied. The Tigers stuck around in the early stages of the frame, but with the score standing at 16-14, the Yellowjackets pulled away by going on a 9-0 run that featured three kills by Gomes, a kill each by senior Stella Pires and junior Emily Barroso, and an ace by senior libero Lia Salvador. A serving error clinched the set for Hilmar.

In the third and final frame, Pires, Gomes and senior hitter Alyssa Colston each nabbed three kills.

“They started the game super confident,” Harris said of her team. “After that first set, they had that look of ‘We got this.’”

Colston entered the match with 342 kills to lead the team, and added seven to her total on Friday before also being honored with a CIF sportsmanship honor during the championship ceremony. Beside her on the court, Ahlem was a force up the middle with five blocks and three kills. Pires, who assisted on over 20 points for the fifth straight game, added six kills and two blocks. Barroso had seven kills, while Lawler had two kills, a block and an ace. 

“That was their biggest strength, which really came to fruition at the end of that state game, was that they started really playing together as a team,” Harris said. “They really wanted this title, and you can't do it unless you are playing for each other on the court, rooting for each other on the bench. It can be so infectious, like it was with us.”

Whether it was the team’s carefully coordinated and catchy chants on the sidelines, Harris and her staff — Madison Owens, Avery Cano, Emma Martin — organizing detailed film sessions and Excel spreadsheets, the way Salvador said earlier this year they would “manifest” wins pregame, Colston and Ahlem encouraging teammates to stare at the championship pennants in the gym for motivation, or even the good-luck tri-tip sandwiches that the team insisted on eating prior to each playoff game, this year was different.

It can never be proven whether one aspect of preparation or one superstition made the ultimate difference, but Harris knows one thing to be true.

“They will forever be known as state champions.”