February 8, 2024
Warriors With a Royal Sweep Over Hope
The Westcliff men's volleyball team has started well this season and on Wednesday they continued rolling with a straight-sets win over Hope International: 25-22, 25-17, 25-19.
With the win, they improved to an overall record of 4-1, with conference play still a couple of weeks away.
Head Coach Alex Griffiths was satisfied with the performance but knows some areas need to be improved.
"It was good to get back with the team after two days of rained-out practices," Griffiths said. "We definitely could have played better. A lot of unforced errors. We are still trying to find our groove for the beginning of this season."
The first set was the closest of the three as the Warriors held a slight lead of three or four points throughout it.
Hope strung together a couple of good sequences and got as close as one point 21-20.
But errors piled up for the Royals as the Warriors were able to take the set to go up in the match, 1-0.
Westcliff started the second set from behind 4-0, but slowly started to chip away at the deficit.
Towards the middle stages of the set, they were able to go on a 7-2 run and took the lead 15-13.
They held on to the lead and finished winning five of the last six points after an attack error by Hope to go up 2-0.
In the third set, both teams went on mini runs but Westcliff was able to have more in their favor as they won the match after a kill by Gabriel Pizza.
Pizza had game-high 10 kills and followed that with nine digs, and two blocking assists.
Leonardo Garcia had 12 digs and three assists.
Michael Schoffstall recorded 13 assists. while Pawel Tuz had one less with 12.
Our mindset is to compete as a team and stay within the system," Griffiths said. "We are looking to earn more points and not just have the opponent error off."
The Warriors will finally get to play at home this coming Friday as they host OUAZ.
The match will start at 6:00 p.m. and will take place at the Jordan Lawley Gym.