It felt like the San Marcos boys volleyball team was playing a game of chase against Santa Margarita in their CIF-SS Division 1 playoff opener on Wednesday at the Thunderhut.
There were times when the Royals caught up, but the Trinity League champions from south Orange County, led by the brilliant setting of junior Chase Wallin, kept pulling away to win the sets.
They took down San Marcos in three straight (25-20, 25-21, 25-20) to advance to the quarterfinals of the 12-team division.
The Channel League-champion Royals end the season with an impressive record of 25-3, with all three loses coming against Division 1 opponents.
San Marcos coach Dave Goss agreed that his team was chasing Santa Margarita.
“Absolutely, all night long. We’d tie it up but we wouldn’t really be able to take the lead,” he said. “They’d hit the accelerator and get it to a two-point cushion again. We would try to scrape and claw and catch up with a couple of key serves. We had some good serves tonight, had a few key aces. When we started serving short in game 2, that was helpful. We got them out of system a bit but we couldn’t sustain that.”
That’s because the Eagles had good ball control and Wallin did a excellent job at spreading the ball around. He created several one-on-one and one-on-none situations for his hitters.
Wallin comes from a family of setters. His mother, Cary, was a three-time All-American setter and NCAA National Champion at Stanford in the 1990s. She was the NCAA Player of the Year in 1995. His older sister was a standout setter at Santa Margarita.
Wallin, who has committed to Stanford, played on a CIF-SS Division 2 championship team as a freshman and was named to the All-CIF D2 team last season as a sophomore. This summer he’ll be playing with the Under-19 USA National Team.
“He not only has that great court feeling and court sense, he also has a great work ethic to work all the details,” said Santa Margarita coach Sinan Tanik of his 6-foot-6 setter.
“We haven’t played against a player like that and we haven’t seen a team that took care of the details like that,” said Goss. “They were in defense, their transition game, their serve receive a really excellent team, and we were not ashamed to lose to Santa Margarita. Hats off to them for just being the better team tonight.”
San Marcos was led by Matteo Burdick with 12 kills and three aces, middle Koji Hefner had five kills in his final match as a Royal and Owen Willer added four kills.
Goss praised Hefner, a basketball standout who developed into a solid middle and a key contributor.
“He will be missed,” said the coach. “But the fact we have everybody (else) returning next year is a very encouraging thought. Our job is to get ready to beat those Santa Margaritas we’re going to face next year.”
