West Ranch takes down Alemany to advance
West Ranch boys volleyball had its hands full with Alemany in the first round of the CIF Southern Section Division 2 playoffs.
The Wildcats relied on their internal motivation to get a 3-1 win (22-25, 25-23, 25-16, 25-22) at home Thursday night.
Just outside the gym was a dry erase board with each player's reason to play volleyball scribbled on it. The answers ranged from getting an NCAA Division I college offer to getting girls to come to the matches.
“If that's their motivation to play as hard as they can, I'm for whatever we can find to give them motivation to play hard,” Wildcats coach Brandon Johnson said.
West Ranch (28-7) will play the winner of Long Beach Poly and Canyon of Anaheim in the second round Saturday.
The Wildcats started with a fivepoint scoring run to start the first set, but an outsized Alemany (6-8-1) trudged onward, taking a 21-20 late in the match on a net violation. Ryland Lazo set up the game point with a block and the Warriors won it when a Wildcats serve fell short.
“We lived up to our title,” Alemany coach David Decker said. “We want to be a small, hard-hitting, scrappy team. I think we surprised them a little bit, being undersized.”
Heavy hitting helped the Wildcats to win the second and third games, along with some minor adjustments. Stuart Soule and Austin Quire came in for some much-needed help with blocking.
Senior Matthew Reid was a force for West Ranch, the unbeaten Foothill League champ, along with freshman Noah Douphner. The former recorded 18 kills, three assists and 15 digs in the game while the latter had 12 kills and 12 digs.
“We're really great offensively,” Reid said, “but sometimes that's not always enough. There are better defensive teams and I think that we can become that defensive team. But it definitely helps to have a few big hitters.”
Alemany's scrappiness emerged for one final rally in the fourth game. The two teams went point-for-point throughout the game until a Douphner kill brought the score to 25-22 and gave the Cats the final boost they needed to close out the match.