FULLERTON — The Sunny Hills boys volleyball team swept El Dorado, 25-13, 25-20, 25-10, on Thursday night to stay unbeaten in Crestview League play.
The Lancers improved to 12-5 overall and 5-0 in league, and coach Albert Soliguen has his sights set high for his team this season.
“Right now we’re shooting for that undefeated league title,” he said. “We want to add another year to our banner and we wanna go past the second round (of CIF-SS playoffs), so my guys are hungry.”
The Lancers were eliminated by El Dorado in five sets in the second round of the CIF-SS Division 3 playoffs last season.
In their first meeting this year, Sunny Hills beat the Golden Hawks in five but the second matchup Thursday was dominated by the Lancers.
Senior opposite Seth Lee (eight kills, three blocks) and senior middle blocker Matthew Barta (five kills, four blocks) provided a huge presence at the net for Sunny Hills.
“He’s adding a lot of offensive power on the oppo side,” Soliguen said of Lee, “helping us convert, helping us create energy, momentum, and really securing a lot of kills, especially under pressure.”
Soliguen also praised Barta’s play.
“We’ve been working a lot on his transitioning,” Soliguen said, “his court presence and just being available at the net. And it really shined this game with him moving around, hitting different sets, to add pressure on the block on the other side. So it really helped out when we were able to get the pass for him so he could put the ball away.”
El Dorado coach Brit Brown felt that her team’s mindset was the difference in the loss.
“It was our mental game,” she said. “We knew coming in here that this is a pretty aggressive gym, pretty aggressive crowd, so we talked about it, but it was all our mental game.”
“We got in our heads,” she added, “psyched ourselves out. We wanted it really bad cause the last one went to five and I think when we messed up. The first few mistakes, we just let it get to us …”
The Golden Hawks (6-12 overall, 0-6 in league) played much better in the second set when Tanner Barber and Ian Dang started supplying good swings from the outside and got within one point but eventually Sunny Hills pulled away.
Soliguen appreciated the way their game plan was executed.
“We kind of capitalized on what we saw,” he said, “and capitalized on the trends that their hitters were showing us and we just stuck to a game plan, right? Served tough, take out the middles and focus on the pins. And we shut down the pins and, you know, it makes the game easier for us.”
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