With an experienced, senior-dominated squad, Dos Pueblos volleyball coach Chris Hughes says his team looks quite comfortable on the floor during every service rotation.
The Chargers were in their comfort zone Tuesday night at Sovine Gym, using tough serving and a balanced hitting attack to sweep crosstown rival San Marcos, 25-15, 25-16, 25-15, and complete the first round of Channel League undefeated.
“We don’t have a bad rotation,” Hughes said after his team improved to 4-0 in league and 12-5 overall. Every rotation we seem to produce. Everybody understands their role.”
That makes the DP attack on serve receive and in transition run smooth.
“We’re pretty much a big family,” senior libero Cole Arutian said about the advantage of having 12 seniors on the team. “Once we get on a roll, everybody knows what they’re doing.”
San Marcos, meanwhile, is young and inexperienced, and that combination at times leads to some shaky moments.
There were times when the Royals showed they could play with the Chargers. They dug hard spikes, scrambled to keep the ball alive, delivered some big hits on the outside and put up a decent block. But breakdowns in serve reception and indecisiveness on transition plays led to big scoring runs by DP in all three games.
“When we get up against a very good serving team and serve receive team like (DP), they tend to steady out,” San Marcos coach Roger Kuntz said. “You can stay with them at tens and twelves and fifteens even, but then they leap away from you. Whether I’m coaching football, baseball or anything else, those kind of teams you can kind of nip and tuck with them a little bit, but then their talent comes out at the end.”
He added: “We’ve got the components, but we still haven’t quite grown enough at this level to beat a good team like that. We get good players that have great matches but not everybody together.”
Lefty Johnny Manzo had a nice match for the Royals (7-5, 1-2) with 13 kills.
“We moved him to opposite,” said Kuntz. “He’s settliing into the role we had hoped for a left hander.”
Zach Yinger added six and Jackson Kunz five for San Marcos.
Team captain Will McCracken paced the Chargers with 11 kills. Robbie Mestas pounded seven in the middle and Jay Larinan contributed six on the outside. Libero Cole Arutian picked up eight digs and Wade Robinson collected four.
But the big key factor for the Chargers was their serving. They reeled off six aces and gave San Marcos fits from the service line all night. Kyle Hoffman had three aces and went on a four-point serving run to break a 10-10 tie in the second game.
In the first game, Arutian served up an ace to help DP roll out to a 6-1 lead.
“What serving ends up doing,” Hughes said, “you have a good serve you get a so-so pass, a so-so set and a so-so kill. We’ve been able to convert off that. We’ve been doing long serves and jump serves. Cole and Wade have a very, very good long serves and Jacob, Kyle and Will have a very good jump serve. Put them all together and it’s pretty hard to defend us off the serve, and that just opens up our defense to get some easy digs which we can convert into kills.”
Hughes was impressed with Hoffman’s aggressiveness from the service line.
“To be able to start off a match with a jump serve and rip it, that says a lot about Kyle Hoffman,” the coach said. “We have a lot of confidence in him and it showed tonight. He came in and, cold turkey, ripped some jump serves and they are hard to pass.”
Hughes also liked the play of Larinan, who’s No. 1 sport is basketball.
“He’s getting better by the second and he’s loving it. And I love having him.”
With the first round of league play under their belt, the Chargers find themselves alone at the top. And Hughes is feeling comfortable there.
“It’s kind of funny to be in that spot,” he said. “I’m enjoying it. Now the challenge is to do it one more time.”
