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Ontario Christian girls volleyball team wins Division 5 championship – San Bernardino Sun

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NORWALK — It didn’t look promising for the Ontario Christian girls volleyball team this season.

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Ontario Christian’s Avery Kunkel hides her face as teammates sing “Happy Birthday” to her after the team won Saturday’s CIF-SS Division 5 girls volleyball final at Cerritos College on Nov. 8, 2025. (Photo by Miguel Vasconcellos, Contributing Photographer)

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After losing a couple of players who transferred to other schools,, the Knights started 2-8 with a challenging nonleague .schedule.

But the Knights haven’t lost since.

Saturday, Ontario Christian won its first CIF Southern Section championship in six years with a 19-25, 25-23, 25-22, 25-20 victory over Chadwick in the Division 5 final at Cerritos College.

“We started off rough,” Ontario Christian coach Paige Liebhart said. “It was towards the end of the preseason I told them, ‘your time will come. Just be patient.’”

Ontario Christian (14-8) won back-to-back titles (Divisions 5 and 3) in 20018 and 2019, but hadn’t made it past the quarterfinals since. The Knights’ playoff journey will continue Tuesday in the state playoffs.

Saturday also happened to be the 18th birthday for the Knights’ senior libero, Avery Kunkel. Kunkel had 20 digs and five aces, leading the team in each category.

“Every time I got nervous, the coaches would just say, ‘do it for each other,’” Kunkel said. “And that really calmed me down. It was so cool to be here with all these girls.”

It was a balanced attack for the Knights. While Isabella Trujillo led the way with 14 kills, Addison Culbert added 10, Avery Van Horssen had nine and Lilly Sampson added seven.

It was Van Horssen who filled up the stat sheet the most, as she added a team-high 19 assists, two aces and three block assists.

“Avery Van Horssen stepped up like crazy tonight,” Liebhart said. “She blocked balls, she set for us, she served.”

The match was a microcosm of the Knights’ season as they started off slowly then picked it up. They were actually penalized a point before the match started for having glitter in their hair, and the Dolphins won 16 of the final 25 points of the set

“It was nerves,” Liebhart said of the slow start. “Plus errors. We made a lot of hitting errors in that first set. We didn’t play our best today, but overall, we limited our errors (after the first set).”

Ontario Christian’s hitting percentage was lowest in the first set (.094), when the Knights also had their most hitting errors and fewest kills. But it improved for them in the final three sets, hitting .184, .122 and .135 respectively.

The next three sets were anything but easy for Ontario Christian. The Knights built a 19-13 lead in the second set, only to watch the Dolphins close to within a point, then eventually take a 23-22 lead. But the Knights scored the final three points, with the final one coming on an ace from Seraphine Rodriguez.

In set 3, Chadwick again rallied from way down, scoring six straight points to take a 19-18 lead before the Knights answered with six straight of their own.

And again in the fourth set, the Dolphins held a lead late, 16-15 before the Knights turned it on.

Chadwick was led by Opal Warner, who had 13 kills and Grace Stanley, who had 10 kills and five block assists.

“We never once talked about this (winning CIF) early,” Liebhart said. “We were taking it day by day. We never talked about it early on, so why do it later? The road was different.”

When asked to describe her team’s season, Liebhart compared it to Supreme Scream, the Knott’s Berry Farm ride where riders drop from 252 feet up.

The big difference between Supreme Scream and the Knights’ season is that while the Knights started the season with a big drop, they ended on top.



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