Volleyball: Poly Shows Off Skill in Sweep of Flintridge Prep

Few teams in the area could probably beat the Flintridge Prep volleyball team in a game of who has the better collection of athletes. 

The Rebels, ranked No. 6 in the latest CIF-Southern Section Division 5 poll, boast a number of players from their CIF divisional champion basketball team — including big men Jared Norsworthy and Kenyatta Smith, whose length and leaping ability can make for a destructive combination.

But while No. 4 Pasadena Poly couldn’t match the Rebels in athleticism Friday, they made up for it in technical volleyball skill. The Panthers took advantage of a litany of unforced Rebels errors, and junior outside hitter Mike Saeta took care of the rest in a 3-0 Poly win. The Panthers swept their three games by scores of 25-20, 25-22 and 25-18.

“I told the kids in the beginning that you have two pretty evenly matched teams — and I do believe that — whoever makes the most mistakes is going to lose the game,” Flintridge Prep coach Sean Beattie said. “If you look at our stat sheet and look at theirs, I guarantee you that our negative is a lot more than theirs.”

The Rebels (5-11, 0-2 in the Prep League) were done in by a combination of unforced service errors and unsuccessful digs that resulted in easy points for the Panthers.

A lot of those errors were a result of an aggressive Poly attack that was funneled through Saeta’s powerful kill shots.

Saeta finished the game with 15 kills, including seven in the second game when he scored three of the Panthers’ final four points to turn a 21-21 tie into a 25-22 win.

“We kind of go as far as Mike Saeta is going to take us this year,” Poly coach Mike Talamantes said. “If he does that we’re a tough team to beat.”

The pressure generated from Saeta, junior Colin Woolay and freshman Will Genske prevented the Rebels from establishing any consistency in their offensive sets, as they spent the majority of their time scrambling to regain possession after a kill shot from one of Poly’s outside hitters.

“We thought that was huge,” Talamantes said. “We disrupted their passing rhythm, and they couldn’t get their middles involved. That’s what we talked about the whole week in practice. We had to make sure we slowed down their middles.”

Said Beattie: “Today they were hitting it hard at us, and we were shanking it into the roof and off to the side. And it’s just unacceptable for our team. I think that was the difference in the game.”

Not helping Flintridge Prep’s cause was the absence of senior setter Kieren Mulroy, who was on a college trip at New York University. In Mulroy’s place was sophomore Mike Lii, who hadn’t started at setter since last year on junior varsity.

The Rebels were also without starter Kory Hamane, who is out for the rest of the season with a dislocated knee sustained during a basketball tournament last weekend.

Add the loss of Hamane and Mulroy to the fact that the Smith and Norsworthy are still working their way into volleyball shape, and you get moments of confusion on the court with players at times out of position or hesitant to make a play on the ball.

“The basketball kids, they’re still not back,” Beattie said. “It’s going to take some time for them to get back there. I think they’ve only played (four) games and that’s with a tournament. … There’s communication errors because they haven’t been playing for a long time, and the little things is what’s going to kill you.”

Smith’s six kills and five blocks led the Rebels, while Norsworthy added five blocks of his own. Lii had 15 assists, and senior Nolan Jimbo finished with nine digs.

The Rebels next play at Webb on Thursday at 5 p.m.