Boys’ volleyball won the NorCal championship game, defeating Whitney High School in three sets with scores of 25-19, 25-22, and 29-27. With the victory, the team its 2nd consecutive NorCal championship title.
The game was held at Dublin High School on May 31.
Junior Joe Worsley said the team had been paying close attention to Whitney throughout the season. “We have been keeping an eye on them the entire season because we knew we might see them down the road,” he said.
“I think our team did everything we were supposed to. We watched film a lot in the past week, we had a good idea of what they were going to try to do,” said junior Yize Dong. “Our main goal was to limit their 2 outside hitters who are going to D1 schools next year. We tried very hard to limit their offense and that helped us a lot,” he said.
Dong thought the final scores in each set were misleading, as the score within the sets were much closer than the final scoreboard showed. “I thought it was a really tough matchup and they definitely didn’t disappoint. We won in three, but all of the sets were anybody’s game,” he said.
Dong closed out the match with a service ace.
Whitney’s “big hitters” were initially a problem for the Cougars. Head coach John Vuong knew going into the game that Campolindo wouldn’t be able to defend against everything that was going to be thrown at them. “We knew they had big hitters, and we knew that we would give up some points, so we tried to stay poised and stay calm throughout the whole course of the match,” he said.
“We knew we weren’t going to stop them but to some way kind of slow them down, and we were able to do that, and that’s what kept us going,” said Worsley.
After the victory the team threw a party to celebrate. “We went to one of the players houses. We ate pizza, played ping pong and watched the [volleyball] game we just played, and like usual, we made fun of each other’s mistakes,” Dong said.
“The game overall was a great ending to our season,” said Worsley. “I knew they were going to be coming after us because we played them in last year’s final and we beat them. They were really motivated, and I thought it was going to be a really fun match, and a good way to end the season,” Worsley said.
Vuong was happy to see his teams’ success. “I’m ecstatic. We worked hard 3 months to get to here and hard work paid off,” he said.
