Outside hitters Ingmar Nordberg and Connor Harze can jump out of the gym, producing kills that ignite an entire gym. Senior libero is as good of a defender and setter in the state. And third-year coach Joseph Peacock has proven he can take the Walnut Creek school to elite heights, guiding the program to a NorCal playoff berth in three consecutive seasons.
But the connective tissue that has elevated Northgate to becoming NorCal’s top team has little to do with talent and everything to do with chemistry.
“It feels like these guys live together,” Peacock said. “They can hang out at each other’s houses. They basically live together at school. It’s just different.”
Northgate earned the top seed in the NorCal Division I bracket after finishing the regular season with just one loss and breezing through the North Coast Section Division I playoffs, en route to the school’s sixth section crown.
Peacock said getting to this point as a public school is an accomplishment in itself.
“The unusual part of getting and developing this much talent is growing this group in one public school, in one place,” Peacock said. “We don’t have the ability to recruit. It’s unheard of to have this much talent out of a landlocked City like Walnut Creek. Everybody else is playing on the beach or Santa Cruz and that’s something that we don’t have, so it’s unusual. We try to appreciate it while we have it.”
On Tuesday, the Broncos easily defeated Central Section powerhouse Bullard in the first round of the NorCal playoffs as they swept the Fresno school 25-18, 25-17, 25-18.
It was the first time Northgate made it past the first round of the state playoffs. This year’s senior class has made it to the NorCal playoffs each of their first three seasons and had been bounced in the opening round each time until Tuesday.
“We learned from our mistakes and we’ve gotten a lot better from last season,” Harze said. “This year we knew we had to fight for it, and we had to earn every point.”
While Northgate has always been an NCS power, having won multiple section titles, advancing in the state playoffs has eluded the Broncos.
But this season, Northgate felt confident that a state title run was in its reach.
“The main goal was to get past the first round of CIF really, but we set some other goals at the start of the season and we exceeded them,” Nordberg said.
The seeds of a potential state championship run were planted early.
Northgate opened the year with 23 straight wins, beating the likes of Folsom, Jesuit, Bellarmine, Oak Ridge and Archbishop Mitty along the way. The Broncos suffered their first loss of the season against St. Francis on April 11, but then rebounded by winning their next 11 games.
In the NCS Division I playoffs, Northgate ran through the competition as it beat Bishop O’Dowd, Berkeley, Campolindo and Liberty without dropping a set.
So far this season, Northgate has lost a total of six sets.
“We wanted to win two out of the three tournaments we entered in and we ended up winning all of them,” Nordberg said. “In my head I always wanted to be the best and this year that was the expectation.”
Throughout this run, Peacock credits his senior class for bringing a type of leadership and work ethic that has carried them through this season.
“They believe the success is worth the sacrifice,” Peacock said of his senior class. “They’re missing out on going to prom and grad night, and I don’t want them to, but they put in the time. They’re in the training room every single day. It’s a special class.”
Even with how dominant their season has been, the Broncos know the path to a state title won’t be easy. Northgate will host Mitty on Thursday in a NorCal semifinal, and if seeds hold, will play Jesuit in the final — a team the Broncos swept this season.
On the other side of the state bracket, heavyweights such as Mira Acosta, Loyola, Huntington Beach and Corona del Mar — all teams in the Top 5 nationally in the latest MaxPreps rankings — are featured.
For Northgate, winning a state title would only validate all the work the team has put in this season.
Needing three more wins to hoist a state crown, the Broncos are trying to stay where their feet are.
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