Going into the fifth set of another Foothill League battle, Saugus Centurions boys’ volleyball knew Golden Valley would lean on its anchor in the middle.
Grizzlies middle blocker and USC commit Nick Waldron started getting into rhythm with a few quick kills in the final set. However, with the game on the line, Saugus middle blocker Landon Cookston came up huge with a match-sealing block on the future Trojan.
Cookston ended the night with seven blocks along with 11 kills on the net.
Saugus won the match, 25-27, 24-26, 25-14, 25-19, 15-10, in the team’s fifth five-set outing this season.
Centurions coach Kaitlyn McGinley saw her team start a little slow in the tight opening sets before exploding in the final three.
“It was a slow start for us to be honest,” McGinley said. “I think we come in unsure of how talented we can be. So it’s a slow start and then once we get some points, it’s back and forth and they wake up. So overall, they played really united as one, they played clean volleyball, which I asked them to do and limit the errors and just swing at every ball.”
Saugus (6-5, 3-2) was led by opposite hitter Max Guardado with 15 kills and two blocks.
The Centurions didn’t rack up a ton of serving aces but served well throughout the contest with some tough spot-serving and jump-floats.
“A couple of weeks ago, I was more focused on the toughness of the serve, not so much the spot,” McGinley said. “So I kind of went back to the drawing board last week and we focused a lot on spot serving this past week.”
Golden Valley (10-4, 2-2) was led by captain Peter Hall, who added six of his team-high 13 kills in the first set.
Three straight points from Cookston via two blocks and a kill fueled Saugus early in the third game, in which the Centurions never trailed and held Hall and Waldron without a kill.
The Grizzlies bounced back in the fourth set and kept it tight until the final stretch. Junior Akshay Karumuri fired down a huge kill to jump within two points at 19-21. However, Saugus pulled ahead and fired off a 6-0 run to close out the set.
The run avenged an earlier 6-0 run from Golden Valley with sophomore libero Luke Talabong serving under duress. The libero impressed Grizzlies coach Sam Hand yet again with his ability to deliver under pressure.
“That serving was phenomenal,” Hand said. “He’s got some big shoes to fill but obviously, as a sophomore on varsity, he’s done well so far. He’s an extremely reliable athlete. And I’ve known that since I got him. He’s always shown a high level of accountability. He’s extremely cool under pressure and it’s not that he doesn’t get nervous. He just knows what he needs to do and even though he’s nervous he executes anyway.”
Talabong led the Grizzlies facing set-point down 19-24 and delivered a clean run from the endline. The sophomore served well and added one ace from the run while Hall and Waldron added points on the net.
Both teams swung away for the fifth set as the two went blow-for-blow with one another until they met at a 10-10 tie.
An ace from middle blocker Sean Tran and two blocks from Cookston powered a 5-0 run to close out the match and hand the Grizzlies their second home loss of the season.
“Landon has really stepped into the role of being a captain this year,” McGinley said. “So he’s done a really good job at taking the team and leading them. We definitely trust him.”
Hand aimed to tighten up the block, while also avoiding Saugus libero and serve receive expert, Sean Ogle.
“We were really trying to avoid their Libero,” Hand said. “Sean Ogle is just a monster in serve receive and on defense. The focus was also to tighten up our block and get closer to the ball. They kept tooling us and abusing our block. The game plan was there but the execution just didn’t happen.”
For the first time in 10 seasons the Foothill League will not showcase an undefeated champion as every team has taken a loss in the first quarter of league play.
Both coaches agreed the league is as balanced as they’ve ever seen it and are hoping to be near the top of the standings in late April.
“I just tell them to play every point and leave everything on the floor every single time,” McGinley said. “There’s not one team that’s dominating. It’s flat across the board of who’s gonna come in and play the hardest and make the least amount of errors.”
“I think it’s quite obvious that nobody’s guaranteed playoffs at this point,” Hand said. “We’re really pressed for every game we get. No win is going to be free as we’ve seen, and I think our goal really is just to continue to show up as much as we can. I don’t really care what our record is, I just want to see them meet their potential.”
Golden Valley returns to league play on Thursday at Valencia at 5:30 p.m. while Saugus gets a week off before hosting Castaic on Tuesday.
