Santa Cruz >> After a frustrating 29-27 loss to Pacific Collegiate School in the first set of their NorCal Division II boys volleyball quarterfinal match, Redwood High coach Tahan Minakov laid into his Giants team.
“They’ve got one player. Stop that player!” Minakov demanded.
As it turns out, every boy on the Pumas’ roster can play, and did.
Senior Wyatt Harrison still came away with 19 kills despite limited action and every player on the PCS roster contributed on the court as the No. 3 Pumas ran away with a 29-27, 25-9, 25-17 victory over No. 6 Redwood, which made the trip from Larkspur to Santa Cruz High for the match. Even freshmen Alessio Bernardi and Jordan Hopkins got into the action, to the delight of a crowd of about 250 fans. They hit back-to-back kills late in Game 3 and Hopkins actually had the match-winning kill, which he tooled off a Redwood block.
“At one point, the only starter on the court was me,” said junior setter Jake Sandidge. “They played really well.”
The team effort give PCS its first NorCal win and moves the Pumas into the semifinals. They will take the long road trip to Placer on Thursday to play the No. 2-seeded Hillmen, four-game winners over No. 7 St. Patrick-St. Vincent, at 7 p.m. The championship is scheduled for Saturday at 5:30 p.m. at Dublin High.
PCS (34-5), the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League and Central Coast Section champions, and Placer (28-8), which won the Sac-Joaquin Section title, actually met earlier this season in the Bellarmine Prep tournament. The Pumas lost in three games but were without all-SCCAL first-team middle Phil Grote.
They’re a different team with him, as the Giants can attest. Grote made a statement with the opening kill of the match on a short set in the middle from Sandidge and finished with eight kills on nine attempts with no errors. He also tallied five blocks.
“He had a big game against us,” Minakov said.
Grote, a junior, may have felt added pressure not because he was making his NorCal debut, but because the team was missing fellow starting middle Alex Ginella. Ginella, a senior and one of only two players — along with opposite Jake Lee — who was part of the first PCS team to qualify for NorCals in 2014, was ill and stayed bundled up at the end of the Pumas’ bench. Junior Josh Silberstein took his place on the court and finished with five kills.
Despite its powerful opening statement, PCS struggled to shake the Giants in Game 1. The teams tied 19 times and changed leads nine times. Neither got more than a three-point edge on the other. In the end, though, two kills not by Harrison but by fellow starting outside Andrew Carter, a junior, clinched the victory. Carter finished with 13 kills.
Sandidge said the team felt it could do better.
“It was not that much of an emotional win for us,” he said, “just not an emotional loss.”
For Redwood, however, which is flush with five seniors — four of whom are starters — emotions ran high. When PCS jumped out to an 11-3 lead, mostly behind kills from Harrison and Grote, and a key call went against the Giants, things started to turn sour.
“We made some mistakes and they got some big kills and big blocks,” Minakov said. “That momentum swing was so dramatic, we couldn’t pull out of it.”
Indeed, PCS ran away with that game and rode that wave deep into the final set to easily secure the win.
Junior outside Jacob Zimmerman led the Giants with 15 kills and two blocks and senior Brendan Winters added eight kills. Senior middle Tanner Jacobberger made three impressive solo stuff blocks and senior libero Andrew Lupario added 11 digs.
Minakov said the loss isn’t what his team, which was making its NorCal debut, would remember about the season. The Giants won their first Marin County Athletic League title since 1999, advanced to the North Coast Section final for the first time in program history and set a school record in wins with their 28-10 mark.
“They put Redwood on the map,” he said, “and hopefully we’ll be able to make another run at it next year.”
Contact Julie Jag at 831-706-3257.
