VENTURA-History was made last night in Ventura, CA, as the Diablo Valley College women’s basketball team won the California Community College Athletic Association State Championship game by a final of 68-61 against the Moorpark Raiders.

With this championship for DVC, it’s the first time since 1977 they have won a state championship for the school. The last sports team to achieve this feat was baseball.

“It’s an accomplishment in itself,” said guard Daisha Abdelkader. “Our fans they traveled down here. Our president traveled down here. It’s not just us. It’s everybody.”

Before the game, the Vikings got to the arena early to stretch and warm up, with guard Sierra Smith expressing gratitude for her teammates.

“Win or lose, I just want all of them to understand I’m so grateful for every single one of them,” said  Smith. “I know we’re all going to put it out on the floor tonight.”

The game began just before 4 p.m. From the gates, Moorpark jumped out with a pretty aggressive lead over the Vikings, as at the end of the first quarter, the Raiders were up 21-10.

In the second quarter, the Vikings bounced back and outscored their opponent 20-13. At this point the DVC was down by four points heading into the locker room at halftime.

“We just have to keep doing the things that we’ve done to get here,” said coach Ramaundo Vaughn. “We didn’t get to 31-1 on accident. We’ve been through pretty intense moments.”

The second half of the game got underway as the Vikings came out aggressively and outscored their opponents by nine points in the third quarter. Guard Jahnay Anderson scored nine points in that quarter, including three 3-point shots.

“I just came out here and I showed up for my team,” said Anderson. “I knew what I had to do when it counted the most.”

The fourth quarter started with the Vikings hanging on to a lead of five points. The score was 55-50 as they needed to play one more strong quarter in order to cap off a state championship victory. Coming off the bench, guard Jasmine Kong really stepped up for her teammates, scoring 13 points on the day as well as going 3-for-3 on 3 point shots.

“I have great teammates and if I’m open they’ll pass it me and my job is just to score,” said Kong. “My coach he calls me ‘the bucket getter’.”

The game became intense and emotional as with just 13.7 seconds left on the clock, the Vikings were holding on to a small four point lead. Moorpark got an inbound the ball one final time, but it didn’t matter as the Vikings were victorious, topping off their overall season record of 32-1. Guard Zahria Hendrix took home State Championship Tournament MVP, averaging 13.3 points, 10.3 rebounds, two steals and two blocks per game.

“It feels good,” said Hendrix. “We got a lot of dogs on our team so you know it just happened to be me this time.”

This championship team will be talked about for many years to come. Smith believes that through hard work and unity are what defines this team.

“It’s a whole group of fighters. We never bickered,” said Smith. “We never fought. We fought for each other.”