After four stressful sets of back-and-forth, the Carlmont varsity boys volleyball team defeated the Hillsdale Knights with a final score of 3-1 on March 29.
“Going into the game, we knew that Hillsdale was an alright team, but we expected to beat them fairly easily,” said senior Kyle Maher.
The game began with both teams neck and neck, but Carlmont took the lead, winning both the first and second sets. The Scots won the first set with a score of 25-21 and the second with a score of 25-22.
Varsity boys volleyball games are played to the best of five sets; the first four sets are played to 25 points, and the final set is played to 15 points.
Junior Rohan Rajagopal was able to help increase the lead for the Scots with three kills, contributing to an average of 14.3 kills per set.
“I think my hitting was pretty good, and I feel like my block setups were pretty solid. As a team, we did a good job executing on swings,” Rajagopal said.
The third set started with a back-and-forth battle that lasted until the end of the set. However, the Knights ultimately took the set with a score of 26-24. The score difference between the two teams was never greater than four points throughout the set.
“Our goal for the game was just to win. My personal goal is to see if we can start having secondary players be in sync with everybody. When you don’t have your starters quite in sync and then your secondaries are not quite in sync, it makes it difficult to play,” said head coach Dan Nelson.
The start of the fourth set began similarly to the third set, with both teams close in score. However, the Scots regained their momentum and won the fourth set with a score of 25-18, making the overall match score 3-1.
The Scots are currently No. 2 in the Peninsula Athletic League and are scheduled to play No. 3 Menlo-Atherton High School on April 3.
“We’ve had kind of a roller coaster, a little bit of up a little bit of down with the consistency overall. I’m just hoping that within this next month, we can kind of be on the uptick and be going into playoffs with a lot of momentum,” Nelson said.
