Boys 14 Black Wins the NCVA Summer Kickoff

Congratulations to our amazing Boys 14 Black team for winning the NCVA Boys Summer Kickoff Tournament. They held on to the #1 seed for the entirety of the tournament, and fought hard to win big! GO DIABLO!!!

Here’s an awesome recap of the weekend from Coach Mike:

Diablo Boys 14 Black came into the tournament as the top seed. This was a little added pressure as these boys have never been in the position of being the favorite to win a tournament. This was a new and exciting challenge that the coaches and players were looking forward to.

1st match was against NCVC 13-1. The boys came out firing and jumped to a 10-2 lead. Beckett Langkammer led the team with a total of 17 kills in the 3 sets.

2nd match they played Core 14 Sac Elite. The boys came out with a little extra motivation as some friendly chatter was happening back and forth between the net. The big hitters came out this match with outside hitter Arthur Barros leading the way. Arthur had 15 kills with Leo Krause and Kian Hardman right behind earning 13 kills each. The big surprise were our new-comers Ben Horn and Luke Maldonado. They came out huge and shut down the opposing outside hitters with a combined 7 blocks between the two of them.

The semi-final match was vs. Sanctuary Boys 14-1. This match was a nail-biter as Diablo was cold and not warmed up. The boys started off slow, giving Sanctuary a 5 point lead. This match went back and forth as you can tell with the scores 25-23 21-25 18-16. This proved to be the toughest challenge for the team as this was the first time they had to deal with the actual threat of a front row setter. In the 3rd set the boys, in Diablo fashion, gave Sanctuary a 7 point lead before they decided to start playing to win. They fought back behind the serving of libero Caleb Sunia who earned 7 straight points to get them back in the match. They ended the match with 1st year setter Ethan Tang setting back row attacker Maxim Kornev who ended the match with a kill!

Championship Match against NCVC 14-1 Blue:

This was a tough match as both teams know each other very well. Diablo has come out on top of the previous 2 matches against this team, but both matches were close. Head coach Mike Rizarri and assistant coach Jeany Cave knew that it was going to be another close match. They knew they were the better team, but there was some added pressure as this was the first time this team was in a position to win a tournament.

The boys came out firing in the 1st set leading the entire time to finish with a score of 25-19. The 2nd set however was a different story. NCVC took an early lead with a few unforced errors by Diablo. The boys continued to do what they do best, which is have fun and run all the plays they have worked on all year. They made it very difficult to know who was attacking and where they were coming from. The team had outside and opposite attackers hitting 1’s the middles hitting 3’s and back 1’s. They were moving all over the place. The surprise of the tournament was the use of the back row hitters which kept the blockers on their toes. The boys battled and came back to win 25-23 after being down 16-22.

Coach Mike and Coach Jeany are extremely proud of the boys. They received comments from other coaches and spectators that this team is exciting to watch. The coaches are ready to get back in the gym and get back to work in preparation for Junior Nationals in Dallas, TX.