By Lucy Jackson

Down two games to rival Loyola, the boys’ volleyball team battled back in the third set, exchanging points with its opponent and extending the match with a 29-27 win. The team carried the momentum into the fourth set, but after securing an early lead, it turned the game over to the Cubs to end the match. Tomorrow, the boys will look to avenge their early defeat in the final stretch of their regular season play in hopes of gaining some momentum to take into playoffs.

“If we could pull out a win against Loyola it would be big,” Sean Berman ’09 said. “That game is our last big obstacle before playoffs start.”

After two months of play, Captain Ross Gruber ’08 believes the seasoned team can defeat its rival in the rematch.

“We’re a young team and early in the season inexperience was a big problem,” he said. “Now we’ve played enough that that inexperience has been rectified. People know how to play together.”

The team played in multiple tournaments to gain that experience, including onr in Santa Barbara last weekend.

“We played top teams in a very competitive tournament,” Gruber said. “We’re up there as a team, but sometimes we don’t play like it. We get down by big margins and sometimes we can’t fight back.”

Berman agrees that mental errors and mistakes are a fault of this team, explaining that they’ll have to overcome careless play to succeed in playoffs.

“We can’t let little mistakes get to us,” he said. “If we keep our heads out of it, we can play our game. We’re trying to figure out how to mesh before playoffs, and I’m sure we’ll get there.”

The team will face league opponents St. Francis and Alemany next week, and has high expectations for its run into the CIF tournament play.

“Every team’s goal is to win a championship,” Gruber said. “Legitimately though, I think we would all be disappointed if we went out any time before the quarterfinals.”