Santa Barbara High boys volleyball couldn’t overcome a slow start and fell in four sets to Beckman High in the CIF-SS Div. 2 Quarterfinals on Tuesday at JR Richards Gym.
The final set scores of the match were 25-21, 23-25, 25-23, 25-21.
With the loss, the Dons’ season comes to a close with an overall record of 13-13.
Meanwhile, Beckman will face the winner of Redondo Union and Dos Pueblos, who face off in Sovine Gym on Wednesday.
The story of the first set was Santa Barbara High’s struggles from the service line, as the Dons ended the set with seven service errors.
The service line woes prevented the Santa Barbara High defense and offense from getting into a rhythm, allowing the Patriots to capitalize early in the set and take a strong 14-9 lead.
The Dons made a late push thanks to a Will Harman kill and back-to-back blocks, but Beckman put the set away with a kill by Luke Morrison.
“We couldn’t get in a rhythm… it was pretty bad and something that I thought our boys wouldn’t duplicate,” Santa Barbara High coach Chad Arneson said of the service-line struggles.
The second set was much more tightly contested, thanks in part to the strong left arm of Harman.
With the set tied up at 13-13, Harman hammered down a kill and followed that up with back-to-back aces to give his team a three-point lead and force a timeout.
“Will didn’t have his best game but he looked great there,” Arneson said of Harman in the second set. “We’re really going to miss his left arm.”
Beckman continued to battle in the set, tying it up at 16-16, 21-21 and 23-23.
However, Harman made sure the Dons didn’t fall into a 2-0 hole by slamming back-to-back kills to close out the set, tie the match up at 1-1 and send a wave of energy throughout the gym.
After a back-and-forth start to the third set, Beckman began to pull away and led 9-5. However, Santa Barbara High stayed in it and tied things up at 13-13.
That same pattern then repeated, as the Patriots expanded their lead to four at 19-15 before the Dons kept fighting and a kill by Harman tied the set at 21-21.
“I give our kids a lot of credit, I know that it wasn’t our best performance but they fought hard and gave it all they could,” Arneson said.
From there, Beckman turned to the heavy left arm of Morrison, who tallied the team’s final three points with kills to take a 2-1 lead and win the set by a score of 25-23.
Morrison was a force on the outside for the Patriots, collecting a game-high 22 kills.
That strong end to the third set carried over to the forth, as Beckman seized control of the set early with a 9-5 lead and they never wavered, earning a 25-21 set victory and a 3-1 match win.
“We were making too many uncharacteristic errors, it really didn’t come down to what row we were in, it was more about if we could serve the ball in and get in a good rhythm,” Arneson said.
“I just felt like we were right there, but we couldn’t quite get over the hump.”
While Morrison led all players, UCSB-bound Raglan Kear spearheaded the Dons’ offensive attack with 20 kills in his final high school match.
Meanwhile, Harman ended the night with 15 kids and Mikey Denver hammered home 10 of his own.
“I’m going to miss them,” Arneson said of the eight-player senior class that includes Kear, Harman and Denver. “They mean a lot to me and this program and they’ve done a lot for Santa Barbara High School volleyball.”
