Volleyball: Arcadia Squeezes Past Santa Ynez in Round 2

The Arcadia boys volleyball team wasn’t clicking on all cylinders when it began its second round CIF-Southern Section Division 3 playoff match against visiting Santa Ynez on Thursday night.

But the Apaches did the things necessary to turn around and that amounted to a 16-25, 25-13, 25-16, 25-23 victory over the Pirates.

“That’s one of the few times we’ve stepped up and come back from being down,” said Arcadia coach Chuck Freberg, who has won 19 league and three CIF titles with the Apache boys program. “The first game for instance, half of their points were what we gave them. If you just hand them out points, they are not necessarily better than you it is just that you didn’t play the game very intelligently. That’s what we didn’t do in the first game.”

Arcadia (22-9) moves on to the quarterfinals on Saturday, where it will play at Camarillo at 2 p.m. The match start time has been moved up to accommodate Arcadia’s prom in the evening.

Santa Ynez (13-10-1) was a tough opponent even though its record might not suggest that. The Pirates have won seven CIF titles and 19 consecutive Los Padres League titles under coach Ronald Fenega.

“We’re very young. I thought we were well prepared in Game One. We knew we had to be aggressive. We got some serves in and got some momentum,” Fenega said. “We probably woke the beast. We got timid and you could see it in the second and third game. We were shooting the ball instead of hitting the ball.”

Santa Ynez led 14-9 in the first game and Arcadia was never able to close the gap any closer than five points. Clay Adam’s kill ended the first game. He had nine kills for the match.

Arcadia, which got 13 kills in the match from Garwing Lai, controlled the second game from start to finish and closed it out thanks to serve that went wide by the Pirates.

Santa Ynez fought back in the third game and led 11-9 at one point. But the Apaches went on a 9-1 run before Santa Ynez called timeout trailing 18-12. The Pirates weren’t able to mount much of a comeback.

A pair of aces by Alejandro De Mendoza and a kill by Sergio Chen for the Apaches helped put Arcadia in front two games to one.

Although it was down, Santa Ynez continued to fight hard in the fourth game.

The Pirates held a 20-17 lead, forcing Arcadia to call a timeout.

But Arcadia regained momentum just before it was too late.

Tommy Brockmeyer came up with a big block on Pirates’ 6-foot-6 middle blocker Josh Avery to make it 21-19. De Mendoza followed with a block of his own.

De Mendoza and Brockmeyer had a pair of kills to tie things at 22. A De Mendoza ace gave the Apaches a 24-22 lead and a kill from Cole Giacopuzzi put the nail in the coffin.

Brockmeyer finished with nine kills and Giacopuzzi had seven. De Mendoza had six kills and four aces.

Avery led Santa Ynez with 12 kills.