SDSU Wins City Championship

SAN DIEGO —  It turns out those conniving Aztecs are actually planning to use USC as a catapult toward national prominence twice this week.

Lurking in the shadows of the football team’s much-ballyhooed date with the Trojans on Saturday is tonight’s duel between the two schools in women’s volleyball (7:30, Peterson Gym). USC is ranked 10th. San Diego State is an afterthought to the top 25.

Of course the Aztecs have another idea of where they should be, and it didn’t take long for first-year Coach Myles Gable to broach that subject after his team erased USD, 15-13, 15-11, 15-7, in the final of the San Diego City Championship Wednesday at Rancho Bernardo High. It was the 11th time in 12 years that SDSU won the tournament.

“Hopefully we can beat USC,” Gable said, “and the football team can follow us on Saturday.”

There is more than mere school spirit involved here. In fact, the volleyball coaches deliberately put their team at a disadvantage by scheduling the USC game the night after the City Championships. Normally, a couple days of recuperation would be in order, and originally SDSU scheduled the USC match for Friday.

Then the coaching staff realized that The Big Game was Saturday, which meant The Big Pep Rally would be Friday.

“And we wanted our girls to be involved in all the hoopla surrounding the football team,” Gable said. “We wanted them to participate in the pep rally on Friday.”

Before the Aztecs could look forward to their shot at USC, they first had to put behind them a summer of turmoil. Rudy Suwara was fired as head coach in July after serving in that post for 16 years.

In that sense, the City Championships offered a morale booster heading into tonight’s game.

Although both USD and SDSU showed signs of early season rustiness, the Aztecs came on strong in the third game and reduced their number of errors.

Jennifer Miller proved to be the springboard in that one as she rallied SDSU from a 1-0 deficit with five consecutive aces. Ironically, USD finally earned the sideout when Miller served the ball into the net.

But that came only after Miller put SDSU ahead, 6-1.

The Aztecs eventually went up 12-1, then had trouble putting the match away.

“We’ve been having trouble with that,” Miller said. “We get to double figures, and we just can’t get over that barrier.”