Tough serving by the San Marcos boys volleyball kept visiting Claremont off balance all night in a 25-16, 25-17, 25-10 sweep of a CIF-SS Division 3 first-round playoff match on Tuesday night at the Thunderhut.
The Royals did a superb job mixing up their serves to disrupt the Wolfpack’s offense. They reeled off 17 aces, led by sophomore libero Keanu Nguyen’s seven and sophomore outside hitter Matteo Burdick’s six.
Senior outside hitter Calvin Frisell paced the San Marcos attack with 11 kills on a .428 hitting percentage.
The (23-9) Royals will be home for a second-round match against Orange Lutheran of the Trinity League on Friday at 6 p.m. Orange Lutheran swept Capistrano Valley Christian in the first round.
San Marcos took charge of its playoff opener in the second set. Down 7-5 after an Ayden Welch side out, Burdick went back to the service line and reeled off four consecutive jump-serve aces that put the Royals into the lead for good.
Nguyen served four aces in the third set, including three in a row, during an 8-0 run.
“The story of this match has to be our serving,” said San Marcos coach Dave Goss, who won his first CIF playoff game. “That was a serving display like I have never seen on the high school level. The amount of short serves against a CIF Division 3 team that went for aces, I think we had seven short serves that dropped for aces. That’s unheard of.”
The Royals baffled Claremont with a variety of serves.
“They mixed up short and deep, left and right,” said Goss of his servers. “They kept (Claremont) on their toes with hard, flat serves, slow, off-speed stuff. It was just a whole mixture of serves tonight.”
Frisell got the Channel League champions off and running in the first set against the co-champions from the Baseline League. He blasted six kills, scored on overset and made a dig inside the 10-foot line that the Royals converted into a kill by Tyler Walker.
“Calvin was really good — 11 kills, two errors and a .428 (hitting average). He was terrific, and he really helped us in that game one, He had, I think, six or seven hits in game one that were just high ball, maybe out of system, that he terminated.”
Another bright spot for San Marcos was the play of freshman middle Jamie Hetrick. He had four kills and hit .500 in his playoff debut. One of his kills was an impressive diagonal blast that landed inside the 10-foot line.
“He has a really good arm swing. He is going to be such a good volleyball player if he continues to develop, as we all can imagine him developing,” said Goss. “He’s got all the physical tools. He’s got the court awareness. He was even making plays in the back row when he came in after serving.”