Chatsworth Savors Midnight Madness

Children fell asleep in parents’ arms, Saturday night turned into Sunday morning, but the Chatsworth High girls’ volleyball team kept playing.

The Chancellors, facing top-seeded Palisades for the City Section 4-A Division title at Occidental College, broke open a tight final game just after midnight.

With Chatsworth ahead, 8-7, senior Jennifer Joseph served six consecutive points to help boost second-seeded Chatsworth past the four-time defending champion Dolphins, 10-15, 16-14, 9-15, 15-11, 15-9 in a match that ended at 12:10 a.m.

“I’ve played this late before, but only with my club team,” Chatsworth middle blocker Jennifer Hodges said. “But the night seemed to take forever.”

The match was delayed for more than two hours, in part because the Sylmar-Franklin 3-A title match (won by Sylmar in five games) lasted more than 2 1/2 hours.

City Commissioner Barbara Fiege said Sunday she believed this was the first time the City 3-A and 4-A volleyball title matches had gone five games and the first time a City final in any sport had ended past midnight.

Franklin didn’t arrive at Occidental until 6 p.m., 45 minutes before the match was supposed to begin and 30 minutes after Palisades arrived for the 4-A match. City Section officials gave both teams extra time to warm up, causing a 20-minute delay.

During the final game of the 3-A match, Palisades (14-2) and Chatsworth (12-4) began their warm-ups in an adjacent gym to save time. “We were really getting pumped up watching the 3-A, their fans were making so much noise,” Palisades outside hitter Courtney Kohl said. “We were fired up full of adrenaline, but it just kind of died later on.”

The teams didn’t step foot on the main-gym court until almost 10 p.m. “We were getting really antsy,” Hodges said. “We figured we probably wouldn’t start at 8 p.m. like we were supposed to, but the other match kept dragging on and we waited and waited.”

Supported by 400 fans (about 100 left before the end of the match), Chatsworth rallied from a 2-1 game deficit behind Joseph and Hodges. Joseph had 19 kills and Hodges had her third outstanding blocking game in a row, finishing with 11 blocks and 11 kills.

“I really felt the support of the crowd and all the noise they made,” Hodges said. “We also had Debbie Smith on our bench encouraging us and helping us the whole match.”

Smith was a starter for the Chancellors until a knee injury early in the third game of the year ended her season. Smith served as a student assistant for the final.

Palisades defeated Chatsworth in four games in a preseason match. “When we played (Chatsworth) early in the year, they seemed disorganized since they had so many players,” Kohl said. “It was much easier then.”

Chatsworth advances to the Division I State tournament and will open against visiting Mira Costa (28-2) at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Newport Harbor, the top-ranked team in the State, is seeded No. 1 for the Southern California region of the Division I championships.