Fresh off a solid weekend at the Redondo Union Tournament, the San Marcos High boys volleyball team put on a show in front of its fans for the first time this season.
The Royals started out quick and never let up, sweeping Santa Ynez by set scores of 25-10, 25-12, 25-9 to open up Channel League play with a victory.
“I thought that we really paid attention to our side of the net and ran our show the way that we needed to run it,” San Marcos coach Roger Kuntz said.
“We want to work hard for freeball opportunities and when we get those, we want to really bring the house. We don’t want to be slow, we want to be faster, we want to show what kind of an engine we have.”
Tuesday night at the Thunderhut, no one could accuse San Marcos of playing slow.
The Royals ran their system to near perfection, only compiling two attack errors the entire match. They also totaled 25 kills, 11 of which came from junior Cade McLean.
McLean was impressive on the night, adding four blocks on the defensive end as well as piling on five aces in the win.
“Last year, he led our team in kills and he had our highest kill percentage. He’s one of our captains this year, he had a strong club season and he’s one of our go-to guys for sure. When we’re in system, he’s hard to stop,” Kuntz said.
Nine of his 11 kills came over the final two sets.
Overall, San Marcos was dominant throughout. In the first game, the Royals jumped out to an 8-1 lead and really held strong from there, relying on a slew of errors from the Pirates.
In the second set, Santa Ynez came out with a bit more energy and took an early 3-2 lead and held strong trailing just 8-6 at one point. From there, San Marcos used a 10-4 run to lead 18-10 and took the set with an ace from McLean.
In the final frame, the Royals relied heavily on McLean, who got the first three kills of the set to help San Marcos jump out in front 3-0. Another three kills from Will Pace in the set helped the Royals take the win with ease.
Setting wise, San Marcos got a big boost from Ryan Feller, who always found the right guy, leading to him tallying 17 of his teams 23 assists. Feller also added a pair of kills.
Santa Ynez’s offense was paced by Andrew Nielson, who totaled seven kills in the loss.
With league play starting so quickly, Kuntz admitted that it “seemed a bit quick” but, overall, the second-year coach is happy with where his program is at the moment.
“Our program is right where I want it to be right and the difficult thing for me right now is there is a lot of competition for court time. But, we just have a good balance across our whole team,” Kuntz said.
San Marcos (5-2, 1-0) will face Valencia on the road Thursday.
email: Jmercado@newspress.com
