It’s always a challenging test for the San Marcos boys volleyball team when it plays at rival Santa Barbara High.
There’s the rowdy crowd, the low ceiling at J.R. Richards Gym and, of course, an always formidable opponent.
The visiting Royals handled all three and passed the test with flying colors on a warm Thursday night, beating the Dons in four sets (25-21, 18-25, 25-6, 25-21) to take sole possession of first place in the Channel League at 5-0.
Outside hitter Matteo Burdick paced a balanced San Marcos attack with 22 kills, while middle Koji Hefner put down 13 kills and Owen Willer added 10 on the outside. The Royals were balanced on the defensive end, too, as libero Keanu Nguyen picked up a team-best eight digs, Jamie Hetrick and Burdick each collected seven and setter Tyler Walker had five.
“It feels amazing,” said Burdick of winning on the Dons’ court. “We play club with most of those guys and they’re great friends, so it’s just great to play them in high school season. The guys played great on my team, so I’m really, really proud.”
San Marcos coach Dave Goss echoed Burdick’s comments.
“So, our team is familiar with the Santa Barbara Dons and how tough they are on their home court, and we knew we had to be perfect to have a lot of success,” he said.
The performance in the third set was one to remember for the Royals. They executed at every phase of the game dominated play and frustrated the Dons.
“Game three, we had very few errors and we had a big win,” said Goss. “But it means nothing if you don’t follow up a winning game with another, and that’s when were started to fluctuate and waver a bit in our performance (in game four). But the boys at the end of the game, they came together, they executed smart volleyball plays and we were able to close it out.”
Riding the arm swings of Hayes Costner, Santa Barbara battled hard in the fourth set.
“Hayes Costner is a stud,” said Goss. “We knew we were going to have a tough time containing him. We hoped to contain their other players and I think we had success doing it.”
Costner’s 25th kill of the match gave the Dons a 20-18 cushion. They had a chance to expand the lead but couldn’t finish a rally and committed a hitting error.
On the next play, the Royals threw up a three-man block to thwart a Costner attack and took the lead for good. Walker followed with a float-serve ace and then fed Willer a jump set that he put away to end a rally and give San Marcos a 23-20 advantage.
“Tyler did a great job tonight; he mixed things up perfectly and set everybody great. I think that’s why we won. Same with Keanu, he did an amazing job, he passed dimes every single time,” said Burdick.
Costner sided out with his match-high 26th kill (of 56 swings) to keep the Dons alive, but on the next play they were called for a net violation. Hetrick followed with a match-ending stuff block.
“You gotta give props to San Marcos, they outplayed us as a team,” said Santa Barbara coach Chad Arneson. “I would say they won a lot of the big points, the little points, whatever you want to call them; they won the longer rallies, the rallies we want to win and those were tough to swallow. They out-hustled us on certain plays, but we had our moments of greatness, too, so we got to hold our heads high and learn from this and understand we get another chance against them.”
The Dons were firing on all cylinders in the first two sets. Denver got all his hitters involved and the blockers did a nice job getting touches on Burdick attacks. A solo block by Costner gave them a 17-14 lead in the first set.
San Marcos fought back with four straight points to retake the lead, 18-17. The teams went back and forth until the Royals broke a 21-all tie on a Burdick back-row attack. They scored the next three points to win the set.
Santa Barbara (11-4, 4-1) regrouped in the second set behind terrific defense and kills from Costner, Kristian Dybdahl and Denver to go up 17-12. Jasper Bell contributed a stuff block and a kill on an overpass to make it 24-18, and the Dons squared the match at 1-1 on a kill by Dybdahl.
San Marcos (15-2 overall) turned the match around in the third set and ended the night alone in first place.
“I want to single out Jamie Hetrick for the job he did passing; Keanu Nguyen did an outstanding job passing and our big gun, Matteo Burdick came through in the clutch in the big game,” said Goss.