The Mammoth Huskies girls volleyball team followed their fourth place finish in the recent Mammoth Invitational with a third place at the very competitive Cal City Tournament on Sept. 20 and 21. According to Huskies head coach John Morris, “this was an amazing result for our team. Mammoth has never made it to the gold bracket on Saturday or even been in the top 10 at Cal City. To place 3rd is a huge accomplishment.”

The Huskies got off to a slow start in Friday’s pool play splitting their first two games with Silver Valley. Mammoth redeemed themselves by splitting with Frazier Mountain, the perennial tournament champion. “As we walked out of the gym after the Frazier game”, Morris said, “other teams and coaches were giving us high fives. We had no idea that was the first game they had ever lost in the tournament!” The Huskies completed Friday’s pool play by sweeping Eastside in two games. The 4-2 record was strong enough to put Mammoth in the “gold” (top) tournament on Saturday as the 5th seed overall out of 24 teams.

The Huskies faced a strong Desert team in their first match on Saturday, beating the newest Desert Mountain League team in three games, 25-15, 22-25 and 15-10. Mammoth then lost a tough semi-final match to eventual tournament champion Bishop, 25-16, 25-23. “Bishop is very strong this year and we came out pretty flat. We did rebound well in game two and made a match out of it”, said Morris. Mammoth faced Palmdale for the consolation match and easily defeated the Falcons 25-10, 25-12 to take home the third place trophy.

The Huskies were led by senior setter Cassidy Morris with 80 assists, senior middle hitter Kelly Berger with 29 kills and junior middle hitter Amanda Kirkeby with 7 service aces for the tournament. “We are really jelling as a team, and just at the right time,” Morris said.

Mammoth begins league play later this week with home matches against Desert on Friday, Sept. 27 at 4 p.m. and Desert Christian on Saturday, Sept. 28 at noon.