SAN JOSE — When a team sees another team four times in a season, there are no secrets.
But that doesn’t mean there can’t still be a magical moment. When Branham and Leigh matched up for the fourth time this season with an appearance in the CIF NorCal Division III boys volleyball championship game on the line on Thursday at Leigh, both teams knew what was coming.
That doesn’t mean they couldn’t stop it.
With Branham leading 6-4 in the fifth set, star Leigh senior Cooper Smith leaped off the floor to take a vicious swing at a free ball and bring the Longhorns within a point. Normally, that’s close to a sure thing.
But not this time. Branham sophomore Pasha Znamerovsky matched him inch for inch, rejecting Smith’s attack with a one-hand smack of his own.
The ball landed on the Leigh side of the court, and suddenly, Branham’s confidence couldn’t be contained. The Bruins took a 7-4 lead and used it to get to the finish line, completing a rally from a set down early to win the fifth set 15-11 and reach the NorCal title game.
And much of it traced back to the singular moment where Znamerovsky made it clear. After losing to Leigh in the CCS Division I championship on Saturday, this time, it was Branham’s turn to pull off a signature postseason win.
“It was amazing,” Znamerovsky said. “I knew he was going to swing at that ball, and I just went up trying to block him, and it worked. It went straight down. It really helped hype the team up. After that, everybody was like, ‘Yeah, let’s win this right now.’”
Branham (28-10) had just lost a five-setter to the Longhorns (26-9) five days prior, losing contact in the fifth as Leigh dominated its way to a breezy, stress-free 15-6 final frame.
There would be no such certainty on Thursday. Every set was contested in a match where each team held the lead multiple times in all four full-length frames.
In the fifth, Branham grabbed the initial lead, Leigh led 2-1, Branham went up 7-4, Leigh tied it 8-8, then Branham finished on a 7-2 run.
“We wanted to win the first round to come back and have the opportunity to play Leigh again,” Branham coach Heather Cooper said. “We went into practice going, ‘Let’s start over. Let’s have fun. We know what we can do, and let’s just, when we get to game time, put it all on the court.’”
The Bruins didn’t have to go back to the drawing board entirely. In the two teams’ second meeting of the year at Branham, the Bruins swept Leigh 3-0.
Another win was in there somewhere. But it was never going to be a sweep. Not on this stage.
“We knew it was going to be a nail-biter,” Leigh coach Jeff Argabright said. “Back and forth, back and forth. They’re a great team, a great program. When we got on board here, they were the top team around. They’re really a reason, a catalyst for us dialing in so much because we wanted to get to that level.
“We probably don’t win these two (CCS) championships without them being so good. So props to them, they just executed a little bit better than us today. The effort was amazing on both sides. I’m proud of my guys. They just played a little bit better.”
Branham’s only previous win in the series was at home, and the Bruins did everything they could to bring Branham down the road to Leigh. It helps that the two schools are two miles and about five minutes apart by car, but the Branham fans’ presence in the Leigh gym helped change the game down the stretch.
“I talked to our athletic director, Kaleb Lane, and I talked to our activities director, Torie Ranieri, and I said, ‘Hey, we need all the help we can get. Spread the word,’” Cooper said. “We knew it would be bittersweet to come back and beat them in their home and take them out of NorCal. So that was the goal.”
While the Branham fans neutralized Leigh’s home court advantage, Branham’s players went to work wiping out Leigh’s lead. The Longhorns had command of the match from the get-go, winning the first set 25-22.
Branham countered with a 25-21 win in set two, then took its first lead with a 25-23 win in the middle set, punctuated by a service ace from junior setter Patrick Willson.
In the fourth, Leigh regained the momentum with a late surge, pulling away after a 14-14 tie to lead 21-15 and ultimately finish off a 25-20 victory.
But the buck stopped with the Bruins in the fifth. The Longhorns’ momentum was flipped early as Branham went up a few points, then Znamerovsky’s stunning block sent the Bruins’ bench through the roof and forced a Leigh timeout.
“That was the turning point in our game,” Cooper said. “And shoutout to Pash, because he was that guy. He did not want our season to end. So that’s awesome. Pretty crazy.”
“That was a huge swing,” Argabright said. “Great play by him. It would have been a one-point game then, momentum going our way. Instead, they got it. So, big swing. But that’s how it goes, man. They’ve got good players that can make plays. We’ve got good players who can make plays. And they just made a great play right there.”
Now, Branham will represent the Blossom Valley Athletic League in the NorCal Division III final, making history as only the second Branham team to reach a NorCal title game.
The first one? The 2023 Branham boys volleyball squad. But this year’s group has the chance to do something the Bruins couldn’t two years ago.
With a win over No. 2 International on Saturday in San Francisco, Branham would reach the first-ever Division III state championship. And Leigh will be rooting for them to reach that stage.
“I was kind of nervous at first, because we just lost CCS to them,” Znamerovsky reflected. “But I knew that we had to win it here. I didn’t want to end my season right there. It feels amazing, because we wanted the big goal of CCS. But now we have this bigger goal of NorCals, and this feels like the NorCals are more important. We all just really want to win it. We really want to make history here.”
