Cougars Take Middle Road in Wild Card

For the Capistrano Valley boys’ volleyball team, the road past the wild-card round led straight down the middle.

Like they have much of the season, the Cougars fed their middle blockers Wednesday to get past visiting Huntington Beach, 15-12, 15-6, 13-15, 15-10, and set up a first-round match with top-seeded Corona del Mar in the Southern Section Division I playoffs.

Paul Johnson, who has signed with UCLA, had a match-high 45 kills and 12 blocks for the Cougars (10-5) and fellow middle blocker Nic Vislay added 20 kills.

Capistrano Valley had lost earlier in the year to Huntington Beach (10-11) in two games in the Orange County Championships.

“Earlier in the year they were fired up and played well against us,” Cougar Coach Rich Polk said”They walked right through us. Tonight we just needed a little fire.”

After the Cougars won the first two games, the Oilers scored five straight points in Game 3 to take a 10-7 lead after a kill by Matt Wendt. Hitting errors hurt the Cougars the rest of the way as the Oilers stayed in the match.

The Cougars regrouped to go up, 7-2, in Game 4, and Scott Campbell (85 assists) set Vislay to make it 14-9 before a Morgan O’Malley kill closed out the match.