The Dos Pueblos Chargers lost in the CIF-SS Division 2 boys volleyball quarterfinals against No. 3 seed and defending champion Tesoro, 25-23, 25-19 25-22, on Wednesday at Sovine Gym.
The Titans showed their experience from the beginning by controlling the pace of play and pounding shots.
“There were a lot of volleyball plays tonight that we just couldn’t capitalize on and we couldn’t win any of the long rallies,” said Dos Pueblos coach Ehren Hug. “We made hitting errors at the wrong time, and we just saw a great squad.”
Tesoro’s Jase Fukushima set up Domenic Marquez and Kaumana Carreira all night long for kills on the outside.
“They look super experienced. I know a lot of them have been playing together in club and in high school for a while, so you could just see that chemistry over there,” said Hug.
Keegan Cook was a problem for the Chargers in set one with his powerful serve. He went on a five-point run to go from a 13-12 lead to 18-12
“That’s the one good thing about playing in South Orange County, you get a lot of guys that are serving tough, a lot of guys that are on the beach,” said Tesoro head coach Pat Eaton. “Those guys played hard. Practice made us a lot better.”
The Titans opened up a 10-4 lead in the second set and never looked back.
Jan Schimdtchen and middle Nicholas Schultz Clifford led a late DP charge to bring the score within four at 23-19.
A couple of unforced errors ended the set.
“There’s always going to be a degree of mental hurdles that you got to get through in a match, especially when you see another team making it look so easy at times,” stated Hug. “A good team is going to go keep the ball in and expose the mental side sometimes and maybe that happened a few too many times tonight.”
The third set was a closely contested game, with the Chargers down 11-10.
Once again, Cook’s serve allowed the Titans to score four unanswered points en route to a match-point kill from a Marquez.
Tesoro has 10 seniors on the squad.
“They’re trying to spend as much time as they can together,” said Eaton.
“A couple years ago, we made a bus ride like this in Santa Barbara and things didn’t go our way. It’s really hard to play here. We know that Dos Pueblos is a storied program and a well-coached team, so we knew we were going to be in for a dogfight. The guys were prepared and luckily it went our way.”
As for the Chargers, Hug has a young group to work with next season.
“I’m super excited about the passion that’s been re-injected into our program the last couple of years. To get to the quarterfinals of Division 2 is a great move forward for the young guys,” said Hug. “They know what it looks like, what the competition looks like, how you’re supposed to act and how to play every point with passion.”
