Silva serves up a big night for Stone Ridge volleyball

Tara Silva might make a cameo in some of the Stockton Christian volleyball team’s nightmares this offseason.

Her jump serve might, anyway.

Stone Ridge Christian coach Ken Shaw said the junior setter was going through a slump recently. Silva spent extra time working with Shaw and his staff after practice to sort out the kinks. They looked pretty worked out on Thursday night as Silva ran off a match-high 17 aces in a 25-10, 25-6, 25-7 sweep of the Eagles in the first round of the Sac-Joaquin Section Division VI playoffs.

The third-seeded Knights (19-10) will travel to No. 2 Sacramento Country Day for a semifinal on Nov. 17.

“My jump serve was working pretty well tonight,” Silva said. “It was amazing, especially being here at home in front of our fans. And then just to win in the playoffs that strong, it just really boosts our confidence.”

Silva fed off that energy, providing Stone Ridge its initial spark.

The Knights weren’t as clean out of the gate as Shaw was hoping, but found their rhythm about midway through the opening set. A hitting error by Stockton Christian (13-8) gave the Knights a 10-6 lead and put Silva at the service line. She bombarded her way to four quick aces, sparking a 7-0 run to break things open.

SRC closed the set with a 16-4 run and didn’t slow from there. The rest of her team followed Silva’s lead with the service game as Stone Ridge racked up 34 aces in the match.

“We work really hard on our serve, so it was nice to see that pay off tonight,” Shaw said. “We’re the kind of team that needs to see a couple successes in a row to get going. Tara provided that spark tonight. It isn’t always her, but she definitely had the hot hand this evening.”

Silva wasn’t bad with her passing game, either. She turned in a game-high 15 assists as the Knights’ offense got going in set two. Aubriana Vander Woude and Justine De Jager paced Stone Ridge with six kills each, while Alexis Louters added four in a 25-6 win to take a 2-0 lead.

“We got a nice scouting report from one of the coaches in our league that had played them,” Shaw said. “They said they’re kind of a sneaky team, that they’ll hit the ball over on the first or second touch.

“We weren’t very good at playing against that at first, so it was nice to have a few days to practice it. Right now, it’s all about just winning. We were able to win pretty tonight, but we know it’s not going to be that way.”

Silva sent SRC into the semifinals in style, putting on a service display to close the match. SRC rode her jump serve to 11 straight points, with a fittingly clean ace to finish the match.

This story was originally published November 12, 2015 at 10:48 PM with the headline "Silva serves up a big night for Stone Ridge volleyball."