Volleyball team stays competitive
By Hector Trujillo
The Scripps Ranch High School mens varsity volleyball team enters the second half of the regular season hoping to emulate the same performance it had to start the first half, which saw them win their first five games.
Not only did the team go undefeated during that stretch, but the team did not drop a single set in any of those matches which were all played at home.
“Our team goal from the beginning of the season is to make the open level playoff and qualify for (state
playoffs),” said Scripps Ranch High School volleyball coach Lance Taschner. “We are in one of the toughest divisions, which means we could have up to three teams competing to get into the open division.”
After the team started off with victories over Helix, Bonita Vista, El Capitan, Rancho Bernardo and a rematch with El Capitan, they dropped their next two matches against Francis Parker and Poway High School, which saw them finish their first seven games with a 5-2 record. That was the team’s best start to a season since 2015 when it started 6-1.
The second half of the season will be crucial in deciding whether they are able to meet their post-season aspirations with several matches against familiar foes and teams they have yet to face.
“Our toughest opponents will be Cathedral Catholic and Francis Parker,” Taschner said. “The strongest part of this team is the fact that we are pretty much all juniors and that we have a lot of players that play high level club volleyball.”
Scripps Ranch plays Cathedral Catholic twice in the second half of the season, with the first match on the road on April 7 and the second at home on April 26, along with one remaining match versus
Francis Parker on April 20, also at home.
Among the team’s standout players so far this season are juniors Blake Taschner, Ethan Hornyak, Brody Erickson, Ryan Rodil and Jax Leatherwood. The team is made up of 14 juniors, one sophomore and one senior.
