The historic season continues for West Ranch boys’ volleyball as the Wildcats are headed to the CIF championship.
West Ranch swept the visiting Murrieta Mesa Rams on Saturday and will play Valencia for the sectional crown next week.
The Wildcats defeated the Rams, 25-21, 25-16, 25-21, behind one of the team’s most efficient matches of the season.
Six Wildcats registered at least four kills while the team served exceptionally in the semifinals win, which also officially puts the team into the state tournament.
West Ranch (24-11) was led by junior Noah Douphner with 18 kills, six aces and a pair of blocks.
Douphner’s serving set the tone with multiple scoring runs coming off the junior’s swing.
“I think the biggest thing for me is I just need to control my serve and get it in most of the time,” Douphner said. “Sometimes I get aces off of a non-100% swing serve and most of the time, I’m not even serving 100%. When I serve the ball, being able to control it like 70% in gets you the most aces compared to a 100% bomb of a serve.”
Douphner had a standout match throughout the match but brought the heat to close out Murrieta Mesa in the third set with eight kills and an ace.
Serving was an efficient factor for the Wildcats as they picked up more points from aces than they gave up on service errors.
Freshman setter Stephen Choi and middle blocker Lucas Reuter both added three aces.
“Aces are a byproduct of fitting a good serve into a good spot with some good pace,” said Wildcats coach Brandon Johnson. “If you go for an ace, most likely you’re going to miss a serve. We’ve had our focus on serving and passing for most of the season. We put in a lot of work recently and we hit some really good serves and aces happen because of it. So I’m very, very happy about that.”
The Wildcats aimed to slow down the Rams’ big outside hitter Patrick Falliaux, who neared the 500-kill mark this season.
Falliaux touched the ball plenty to open the set and totaled five of his 13 kills in the opening game.
Douphner registered a kill and a block to reach set point before an ace from Choi ended the first set.
Murrieta Mesa (25-9) lost starting opposite hitter Chase Woodruff early in the match with an ankle injury. Other Rams needed to step up but Murrieta stumbled in the second set while West Ranch operated with ease.
The Wildcats led 18-9 late in the set, with 15 self-garnered points from kills and aces. West Ranch didn’t miss much in the second set.
Reuter added two of his aces while the Cats’ other middle blocker Lucas Fico totaled three of his eight kills in the second.
The Lucas duo in the middle hit a combined 88.2% on the night.
“As a coach, you want to see your team just improve and get better and we’ve been doing that consistently for a few weeks now,” Johnson said. “I think that we’re still not even there. I think that we have more to give. Today was the best collectively we’ve been out of the middle blocker position. We were pretty unstoppable through the middle and because of that it opened up everything else for everyone.”
Junior Ethan Paik and Logan Sanchez also both added five kills for West Ranch.
Choi and junior setter Jack Manansala could set Douphner all night but worked hard all season to build strong connections with every Cats hitter.
“At the start of the season, we weren’t really connecting very well, but we’ve grown a lot and I think we have really good connections now,” Manansala said.
Falliaux didn’t get as many touches in the second and desperately needed more in game three. The outside hitter swung hard in the final set but just couldn’t will his team to victory alone.
Reuter sent back an outstanding block off a pipe hit from Falliaux to go up by four late in the set, which Douphner ended with his final kill.
West Ranch has now won 10 straight matches and is playing at its best at the right time.
“I think what helped is all the tournaments we went to, we played some really high-level teams and that we almost had no shot of beating,” Douphner said. “You sort of watch them as you’re playing them and go, ‘Oh, what do they do so well?’ and then you bring it home to practice and apply that. It took a while for guys to start understanding what varsity volleyball meant but later in the season, everybody just started to click together. If one guy has an amazing game, then that gets everybody else hyped up and everybody else starts playing better. It’s a chain reaction.”
The stage is now officially set for the Foothill League/Santa Clarita Valley CIF title match. West Ranch and Valencia will face off at least one more time this season on Saturday, as the two could potentially meet again in the state tournament. The meeting marks Valencia’s return to the CIF championship while West Ranch, a wildcard team, will make its first appearance in both the title game and state tournament.
“I’m pretty sure it’s the first time in program history we’ve ever made the CIF finals,” Douphner said. “It’s a huge accomplishment for this team because so many of us are new to varsity volleyball. We are not going to stop there. I think we’re excited and we just want to keep on going. The drive to just play more volleyball is what ultimately keeps our team going because we were a wildcard team. We could have lost that Tuesday and been done but no, we wanted to keep going. We want to keep playing with this group of guys.”
The two meeting in the title match also means a CIF crown will remain in the SCV, as Hart brought home a title last season.
The Vikings handled business this season, beating the Wildcats in four sets twice, but will have the aching thorn in their side, that is West Ranch, one more time.
“It’s almost a new West Ranch that Valencia is going to be facing,” Douphner said. “We know what they’re going to do and they know what we’re going to do. It’s going to be a dogfight and I’m hoping we can come out on top. I think we are a completely different team than who they faced during league play. They could be a much better team, too, because they’ve had so much time and experience together. But ultimately, I think we’ve improved the most. So I’m excited.”
West Ranch takes on Valencia for the CIF title on Saturday with a time and location yet to be determined.
