It’s no secret who San Marcos’ boys volleyball team will be setting when it needs to close out a match.
Andrew Grimes showed some hitting smarts in the final few rallies of Tuesday’s match at Bishop Diego, putting away the final two points in the Royals’ 25-20, 25-21, 16-25, 25-21 win over the Cardinals at the Brickhouse.
The Cardinals had scored three straight points to force a San Marcos timeout late in game four, and Grimes came out and swung as hard as he could on a left-side set. He was stuffed emphatically.
So, on the next point he received the same exact set and finessed a cut shot perfectly to the intersection of the sideline and eight-foot line for the point. He followed a kill from the right side on the next point to close out the match. He tallied a match-high 20 kills on 43 swings on the night.
“That was a smart change by him. He’s got a lot of tools in his bag, to be sure,” said coach Roger Kuntz, whose team is now 3-0 on the year.
The Cardinals showed that they can hang with the big boys, and if it weren’t for a passing breakdown in the fourth set they would have had the inside track on forcing a fifth game. Bishop led the fourth 14-9 before the Royals roared back to win it.
“Our passing broke down a bit in that final game. We made a few mistakes and just got down on ourselves,” said Bishop’s Garrick Vanderfin, who finished with 17 kills on the night. “I thought our passing was pretty good before that, and we’ve already played some bigger teams at the Redondo Union Tournament so we know we can play well against them.”
Kuntz said that scheduling a small school with a strong team like Bishop puts San Marcos in a tough spot.
“We’re kind of in a no-win situation in this match right here because Bishop’s got a great team… If we win it’s because we’re supposed to, and if we don’t then it’s ‘oh, well are they really as good as they are’,” he said.
The Royals were playing with a voice from the recent past at their backs, as legendary coach Jon Lee, who retired from coaching the team last year, observed from a chair along the back wall.
“Yeah, I heard him yapping back there,” said a smiling Grimes of Lee, who recently returned from a trip to Africa where he unsurprisingly found some time to introduce the sport to Ugandan children.
Lee kept telling his former players to perk up a bit as they stepped back to the service line, and both Kuntz and Grimes agreed that the Royals lacked energy early in the match.
“I told our guys in the first game I thought we were very lethargic, to tell you the truth,” said Kuntz. “I don’t know if we were just tired after an exciting first week or what.”
But the Royals were able to step it up when needed in order to mount the fourth-game comeback. Cardinals setter Sean McIver notched three aces as the hosts jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the set. Vanderfin had a nice run of his own at the service line to push it to 14-9, but Michael York notched two straight later in the game, tying it up at 15-15. Neil Greene went on a 5-point service run, and the Royals were able to keep the lead the rest of the way.
Cardinals coach Joe Reiken was pleased with his team’s overall performance, but was by no means completely satisfied, particularly with top-caliber teams like Oaks Christian and Oak Park awaiting in the Tri-Valley League.
“I feel like we gave them some anxious moments, but we gave ourselves more I think,” said Reiken, who led the Cards all the way to the CIF semifinals last season. “We lost that match on passing. In the second game, our passing was spot on and they couldn’t stop us. But we let them get on too many service runs… I think we’re going to be fine for league.”
The Cardinals (1-1) host Santa Ynez Tuesday.
