Youthful Sage sweeps

NEWPORT COAST - First year boys’ volleyball coach Dan Thomassen is happy his team had an easy win in the first round of the CIF Southern Section Division V playoffs. Sage Hill School (14-7) defeated Orangewood Academy (8-6) 25-8, 25-10, 25-15 Thursday night.

But he knows the rest of the ride through the postseason won’t be so smooth, especially when he’s leading a team devoid of seniors.

Two freshmen, three sophomores, and two juniors make up the team’s starters.

“Without any seniors, our biggest question is maturity, and when we get into tight matches how they handle it,” Thomassen said. “We’ve struggled with it at times, but we’ve also done really well. If we can stay emotionally stable and mature, I think we’re as good as any team in our division.”

The Lightning is led by center Michael Bear, a sophomore who only started getting substantial volleyball experience last year when he was playing junior varsity. Bear had 35 assists Thursday.

“Even though he’s undersized, he runs the offense really well,” Thomassen said. “He’s our quarterback. Even though he’s relatively new to volleyball, he’s very smart, and he’s picked up the details very quickly.”

Sophomore Bayle Smith led the team with 15 kills and seven aces.

According to Thomassen, the Lighting will likely play Glendale Adventist next, a team it’s never seen before. Glendale was undefeated in Westside League play, and lost one match during the regular season. Glendale will play Providence tonight in its opening playoff match.

There will be a coin flip to determine which team has home-court advantage.

Sage Hill won’t have some of the luxuries it had facing Orangewood (8-6), and it won’t be as easy to find players to single out for easy aces, either.

Sage Hill was able to quickly wrap up the second match by targeting serves at Brian Lee, and Thomassen said the Lightning picked on Andy Arteaga as well.

“We knew going in that this was a team that if we played the way we were practicing the last few weeks that we should be able to handle, so we weren’t surprised by anything they did,” Thomassen said. “They were a little smaller than we thought. We knew if we could control the ball, then we’d get our kills.”

SORAYA NADIA McDONALD may be reached at (714) 966-4613 or at [email protected].