Warrior spikers reach second round of playoffs

Fallbrook High School’s boys volleyball team reached the second round of the CIF Division I playoffs before falling to top-seeded La Costa Canyon in the quarterfinals.

The Warriors hosted Bonita Vista for a May 13 match and won in four games before losing in three games May 15 at La Costa Canyon.

“I could see why nobody in San Diego has beat them,” Saunders said of La Costa Canyon, which entered the match with a 23-4 overall record and a perfect 10-0 won-loss statistic in Palomar League competition. “We played one of our better matches. We just played against a good team.”

Saunders was more pleased with the 25-13, 25-15, 25-15 loss to La Costa Canyon than he was with the Warriors’ win over Bonita Vista. “Wasn’t pleased about the way it went,” he said of the first-round match. “We should have done a lot better than we did.”

Fallbrook earned a 25-21 victory over the Barons in the first game. “The first game I don’t think we were ever in trouble,” Saunders said. “The first game seemed to go okay for us.”

The Barons came back for a 32-30 victory in the second game. “We were trading off the whole time,” Saunders said.

The third game saw Bonita Vista lose two points due to a server out of rotation which contributed in part to Fallbrook’s 25-23 win. “The third game was probably the scariest,” Saunders said.

Fallbrook won the match with a 31-29 victory in the fourth game. “We didn’t play very well,” Saunders said. “We just made a lot of errors.”

The match against Bonita Vista was made more disappointing to Saunders by the success of the previous day’s practice. “We were very confident. The day before our practice had gone very well,” he said.

The match against Bonita Vista was also the final home match of the year for the Warriors. “I always felt that we could take over the match at any time. We just didn’t do it,” Saunders said. “It was way too close.”

Fallbrook, which was given the unofficial eighth seed in the CIF Division I playoffs, advanced to the quarterfinals against the top-seeded Mavericks.

“There’s no weakness there,” Saunders said of La Costa Canyon. “They’ve got pretty solid players in every position, and it was evident just watching them warm up.”

The first game was tied at twelve points apiece before the Mavericks went on a scoring run. “It was nice that we opened up scoring the points. We came out and played real tough,” Saunders said.

The second game was also close until the midway point. “We played well. There were some great rallies,” Saunders said.

“It was an exciting match for us,” Saunders said. “This was a good experience.”

La Costa Canyon held Fallbrook outside hitter Taylor Hughes to 14 kills.

The quarterfinal loss gave Fallbrook a 15-7 overall record, including a 6-2 record in Avocado League competition which placed the Warriors second in the league standings. All seven of the Warriors’ losses were to teams seeded third or higher in their playoff divisions.

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