'We've got some ballers out there': Young Gulf Breeze volleyball squad tops Navarre

Both Gulf Breeze volleyball coach Jasmine King and Navarre coach Ryan Davenport know one thing: once district play starts, it’s going to be a battle.

Add in the rivalry aspect between the Dolphins and the Raiders, and things get even tougher.

And Tuesday’s match in Navarre didn’t disappoint.

Gulf Breeze picked up its 10th win of the season with a 3-1 win over the Raiders. The Dolphins won with set scores of 25-15, 27-25, 22-25 and 25-22.

Volleyball in the desert: Gulf Breeze's Bella Satterwhite commits to Arizona State University

PNJ Volleyball Leaderboard: Escambia, Santa Rosa County stats entering mid-September

“It’s enemy territory, basically,” King said. “Ultimately, I think we did good on a majority of the things we’ve been working on.”

It was Navarre that started on a hot streak, going up 5-0 over the Dolphins to begin the first set. Gulf Breeze started to claw back but didn’t hold a lead until Aubrey Tylavsky served an ace to put her team up 9-8. From there, the Dolphins showed their offensive prowess with a few different players up front producing strong hits to eventually take the set win.

Addisyn Tolbert picked up the kill to close out the set.

Neither team separated itself from the other by more than two points until Gulf Breeze’s Bella Satterwhite went on a small run of three points to create a gap, putting the Dolphins up 10-5. The match tighten following a block from Navarre’s Emma Gross. Even when Gulf Breeze boasted a five-point advantage, Navarre crawled right back on a small run to cut the lead to one point.

Navarre had the set point locked away twice, but committed a double hit twice, giving the Dolphins the necessary equalizer to make it 24-24. A long serve from Bella Ciolino put Navarre up by a point before Satterwhite responded with another kill.

Izzy Beech closed out the set with a kill.

With their backs against the wall, the Raiders tied the third set 4-4 and never relinquished the lead until very late. Gulf Breeze made some strong runs to tie the match 19-19, but Navarre’s hitters started to connect with back-to-back kills from Kaitlyn Montgomery, eventually tying the match again, 22-22.

Navarre’s Julia Irmen served three straight points – and Gulf Breeze committed some self-inflicted wounds with a block that went out of bounds, plus a spike that went into the net – to avoid the sweep.

“They just don’t want to give up. I’m proud of them for showing they can at least compete at this level,” Davenport said. “These girls take it to the max and don’t want to drop a set. I’m very proud of them in the end.”

The Raiders kept their foot on the gas pedal to begin the fourth set, utilizing their front players to pick up some key blocks. A four-point run from the Dolphins gave them the necessary momentum to close out the final set. Between Brooke Burger, Estelle Reece and Sydney Sutter, Gulf Breeze continued to increase the point gap. Navarre’s Amanda Dodson cut the deficit to two points behind a pair of kills from Sienna Wnetrzak, but Reese closed out the match with a kill.

“What I told the girls all season is, ‘We’re not going to win games just with one hitter,’” King said. “Hitters have to be up, available, active and confident in themselves so that they can get the big swings, too.”

Improving its record to 10-2 this season, Gulf Breeze places at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at South Walton.

“What we told the girls the other day is, ‘We’re going to expect a best game from everybody, it doesn’t matter who’s on the other side,’” King said. “Every single person we play is going to give us our match because everybody wants to beat Gulf Breeze.”

Navarre (9-5) faces yet another Dolphin squad, as the Raiders play at 6 p.m. Thursday at Mosley.

“We’ll learn from it, keep building. … We’re just going to move forward and keep trying to get better,” Davenport said.

Here are three takeaways from Tuesday’s match.

Multiple hitters

When a team’s going against Gulf Breeze, more likely than not people expect Bella Satterwhite to be the team’s primary hitter. The junior, who recently committed to Arizona State for beach volleyball, was dominant yet again up front with several kills.

That’s where other players like Burger, Toldbert, Beech, Reese and Sutter come into play, giving the Dolphins multiple options up front.

But there were points where Navarre picked up on Satterwhite, recording a few key blocks. It’s something that the Raiders were working on leading up to the game, Davenport said.

“We knew they have big hitters. … They can reach high and hit hard. We had to slow them down somehow. We put in some work on that. It wasn’t perfect,” he said. “There were some opportunities that we missed.”

When Satterwhite did connect, it made an impact.

“I was just going up there, trying to swing off the block as hard as I could, trying to find open spots. … I was really just going for it,” she said. “They’ll get a couple (blocks) on you, but you come back from it.”

Mentally stronger

A little more than halfway through the season, King did note the Dolphins have been improving on the mental side of the young. Gulf Breeze has a younger roster this season with just four seniors to go with five juniors and five sophomores.

So, at any point, there may be only one senior on the court surrounded by underclassmen, King mentioned.

With the success that the Dolphins have boasted in recent seasons – a combined 99-17 record since the 2019 season up until the Navarre win – King knows there’s an “additional level of pressure” to keep up the standard and prepare for another team’s best night-in and night-out.

And the young squad has started to learn how to manage that pressure.

“The mindset is that we have to understand we have been in a position of privilege and excellence for a really long time,” King said. “We’ve got some ballers out there, so we’re doing good.”

“We’re always in practice trying to work on every little thing – blocking, defense, passing. That’s probably the most important thing,” Satterwhite said. “We’re focusing on playing our game and not worrying about who’s on the other side.”

Down, but not out

Since Davenport’s first season at Navarre in 2018, he said the Raiders have been building a culture. The program has posted three winning seasons and is on its way to a fourth consecutive season above .500.

It’s “been years” since the Raiders, in their “heavy rivalry” against the Dolphins, have challenged Gulf Breeze, Davenport said. But “this is a group of girls where they really want it.” On Tuesday, Navarre had its fair share of chances to close out the tight second, third and fourth sets.

And close sets are what Navarre has grown accustomed to as of late. A lot of sets have been decided by just a handful of points in a tough schedule – including a 2-1 defeat on Sept. 9 to Chiles, which is ranked No. 8 overall in the state.

“Hopefully we can jump over that hurdle at some point. We’ve had some tough, close losses against great teams,” Davenport said. “The fact that we’re competing against these teams that we hope to see in postseason, it is promising. It’s the top of the mountain, so it gets a little bit steeper. Hopefully we just take it a step at a time, and hopefully we’ll end up on top at the end of the season.”

Ben Grieco is a sports reporter for the Pensacola News Journal. He can be reached on X (@BenGriecoSports) and via email at BGrieco@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Gulf Breeze volleyball defeats rival Navarre in four sets