The Palo Alto High School girls’ volleyball team (4-8, 19-11) will play Homestead High School (10-2, 22-13) in the Central Coast Section playoffs at 7 p.m. today at Homestead.

According to junior middle Claire Dennis, this match will be especially important because Paly has lost to Homestead multiple times before.

“This is going to be an intense match because we’ve lost to Homestead in the past this season and also in past years in CCS,” Dennis said. “We played them in the finals last year, so that was a big rivalry.”

Sophomore outside hitter Katie Passarello explained the relationship between Paly and Homestead.

“It’s been a pretty big rivalry just because both teams tend to do very well in league,” Passarello said. “They’re both big schools and athletic in all their different sports, not just volleyball. So we tend to get head-to-head with them in multiple sports.”

Given this rivalry, Dennis believes that Paly has what it takes to win.

“I think Homestead is tough competition, but I think that we definitely have the ability to beat them because we’ve been working really hard in practice and we’ve had a lot of improvement since last time we played Homestead,” Dennis said. “Since then, we’ve been going up and becoming a lot stronger and a lot more consistent.”

Passarello also has high hopes for an intense game.

“It’ll be a tough match, but if we play well, which I know we can, it’ll be a really fun game because there’ll be a lot of competition,” Passarello said.