Boys’ volleyball (14-18) took on Saratoga High School (24-7) in their first round of the Central Coast Section (CCS) Championships on Monday, May 11, but fell in three straight sets (16-25, 19-25, 21-25), closing out their season.
Assistant coach Eric Chiang said the team was unsure if they would make it to CCS until two days before the match. In addition, the Panthers had never played against Saratoga, who were seeded eighth in the tournament, above the Panthers.
“We didn’t know too much about the team. We’ve never played them before, and we were playing at their home gym,” Chiang said. “So that was a bit of an advantage for them, being that they were seeded slightly ahead of us as the eighth seed when we were the ninth seed.”
Despite these challenges, Burlingame continued to fight hard. Senior captain Fabian Falconette said the Panthers tried to keep their morale up even when they lost points to Saratoga.
“There’s so many points in a volleyball game that if you get held up on every little mistake you made, that one error you made wasn’t what cost us the game,” Falconette said. “So just focusing on after that play happened, we addressed it, and then you move on.”
Saratoga’s strong serves and hitting continued to score points as the Panthers struggled to win back the ball. Chiang said the team ultimately lost many points because of Burlingame’s weaker passes. Chiang said that because passing was a weakness throughout the year, the team will continue to work on it in the following seasons.
“That particular challenge has been present with our team for a big part of the season, and so it’s just something that we’ll continue working on. It’s teaching them new techniques beyond just passing with their platform and then trying to be more aggressive about taking the serve with their hands rather than their passing platform,” Chiang said.
Even though the team had an early end to their season, Falconette said they showed a lot of growth, especially in light of the hardships they faced.
“It was just a great wrap-up to the season. I think it was definitely showing what we could do,” Falconette said. “Looking [from] an outer perspective, just seeing how far we’ve come, from starting as a nine-man team, thinking, ‘Oh, this is going to be an interesting year. We’ll see how it goes,’ and making CCS.”
