El Segundo won a CIF-Southern Section boys volleyball title last year. San Marcos has been knocked out in the semifinals the last two seasons.
The two schools met in Thursday’s Division 2 opener at the Thunderhut, and the host Royals took their first step toward getting over the hump and making a final by sweeping the defending Division 3 champions.
Behind the 17 kills of senior Jack Wilson and tough serving, San Marcos overpowered El Segundo, 25-17, 25-14, 25-8 to advance to the quarterfinals next week. They’ll travel to Anaheim to play Servite on Wednesday. It will be a rematch of last year’s quarterfinals, which the Royals won in four sets at home.
After a slow start, San Marcos (33-3) picked up its play and took over the match against a younger El Segundo squad (9-13). Wilson blasted three kills to spark a six-point run to erase a 10-6 deficit in the first set. The senior outside scored two more points on a kill and a block and senior setter Cameron Earls followed with consecutive ace serves for a 16-12 lead.
The Royals continually took the Eagles out of system with their tough serving. Wilson, Rice and freshman Matteo Burdick inflicted further damage with their hitting and blocking.
At 11-10 in the second set, Wilson hammered a ball through the block and Rice blasted a kill from the back row to spark 5-0 run. Burdick scored the final two points of the run on a solo block and a kill of a back set from Earls. To end the set, the Royals scored four straight points on a tip by Wilson, a block and kill from Rice and a solo block by Earls.
Rice finished with 11 kills on a .471 hitting average. Burdick had three blocks off the bench.
San Marcos coach Roger Kuntz felt it was important the team got off to a good start in a smaller playoff bracket.
“Because there are only 16 teams in Division 2, this is like a second-round match. So, the reason why we kept the foot on the foot pedal is we want to be in the quarterfinals. That’s important,”he said.
The Royals had a good night blocking the ball, which Kuntz was happy to see.
“I thought we were pretty efficient with our blocking tonight. We’ve been a very weak blocking team over the years and I thought we got better at it tonight,” he said.