Castro Valley High School held a big lead against Foothill late in the first set of the North Coast Section Division I boys volleyball championship match.
But the Falcons made a surprising comeback to win that set and two of the next three sets, winning 25-23, 13-25, 25-18, 25-22, and winning the first section of the Foothills. won the men's volleyball title. Since 2010.
In addition to 2010, Foothill won NCS Division I titles in 2006, 2007 and 2009 under longtime coach Dusty Collins. The Falcons' women's volleyball team also won the NCS Division I title with Collins coaching last fall as Foothill achieved the rare honor of winning both the women's and men's NCS volleyball titles within the school year. . The last time this happened was in 2016-17 with Campolindo Moraga.
“This is what we wanted,” Collins said of this year's NCS Championship, whose men's team was eliminated in last year's NCS Division I finals. “It's been a really great year.”
On May 12, Foothill was selected as the fifth seed in the California Interscholastic Federation NorCal Division I playoffs. On May 14, after the deadline for this article, the Falcons faced No. 4 Santa Cruz in the first round. The semi-finals will be on May 16th and the finals will be on May 18th.
The Falcons' first set comeback on May 9th may have been the key to the NCS title match.
Second-seeded Castro Valley built a 19-10 lead, but Foothill's Dean Caudill had a kill to stop the Trojans' service run. The Falcons' Caleb Lye and Casey Collins each made two service points to cut Castro Valley's lead to 21-16.
But then Foothill senior Noah Mitzenmacher's 4-point service almost turned the Falcons around and brought them within one point, 22-21.
“We knew we had to get some momentum going,” Mitzenmacher said. “Our team is second to none when we play with energy.”
A kill by Castro Valley's 6-foot-6 Lucas Wynn gave his team a 23-21 lead, but Foothill took the points with a kill and ace from Yun Bae and a block from Kayan Bora, giving the team a 23-21 lead at the end of the set. He scored 4 points.
“Before we went into the game, we said we can't play score…play the point in front of us and see if we can score on that play,” Dusty Collins said. Ta.
Castro Valley led from start to finish in the second set, starting with a 5-0 advantage and building a 16-6 lead to win 25-13. But Foothill came back from a 5-2 deficit in the third set and put the Trojans up 8-all on Bora's putback kill. After several sideouts, Bae scored a six-point serving run to give Foothill the lead for good in the set, 15-9.
An interesting change to the match occurred in that set. In the first two games, Castro Valley appeared to be able to counter all of Foothill's hits. After that, it was Foothill who became the Terminator defensively.
“I think it's just our mentality,” said Bae, who had 39 assists as the Falcons' lone setter and also had a team-high 12 service points. “We had to keep our energy up. Our energy contributed a lot to our win tonight.”
“If you can turn defense into offense, if it's a close game, usually the team that does that better will be able to pull out,” Dusty Collins said.
Kills from Foothill's Cameron Hitchan and Vohra gave the Falcons a 4-2 lead in the fourth set, and Foothill never looked back. Castro Valley rallied in the closing stages to narrow the gap to 24-22, but Vohra's incredible shot sealed the victory, sending the Falcon bench and other students sprinting onto the court in celebration.
Vohra led Foothill's attack with 12 kills in the match, while Casey Collins and Kayden Steadman both had eight kills. Mitzenmacher had eight service points for the Falcons, and Sun had a team-leading 11 digs. Bae added his 10 digs.
