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Portola players celebrate after a quarterfinal round victory over Pacifica Christian. (Photos: OC Sports Zone, Tim Burt).
Portola High School’s boys volleyball team is making the most of its first trip to the CIF playoffs.
The Bulldogs earned a berth in the CIF Division 4 semifinals defeating Pacifica Christian in five sets in a quarterfinal round match Wednesday night in front of an enthusiastic and large turnout at Portola. All the fans sat on one side of the gymnasium bleachers and it was really loud.
The scores were 25-16, 19-25, 19-25, 25-23, 15-13.
The fourth-seeded Bulldogs (24-10) will face top-seeded Capo Valley Christian Saturday night at Capo Valley Christian.
Pacifica Christian (20-10) gave Portola all it could handle and had a 2-1 lead in sets before the Bulldogs bounced back.
“This is our first year making CIF, last year we were 0-12 so we’ve really made a turn-around here, I owe a lot of it to the senior class,” said Portola Coach Eric Graham. “They were juniors on that team and decided, ‘I don’t want to be a winless team’ and they went and worked really hard in that off-season, they played club, and even though they were seniors and they didn’t have to do PE, they came to PE every day to get better. Our seniors are why we’re doing so well.”
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Portola’s Kian Wojtowich (No. 15) was his team’s kill leader.
Danny Dillon gets ready to serve for Pacifica Christian.
Pacifica Christian players celebrate after a point.The match was high energy from start to finish with not many points separating the two talented teams.
In the fifth and deciding set up to 15 points, Pacifica Christian had an 11-8 lead before Portola began its comeback. The Tritons also held a 16-8 lead in the fourth set before the Bulldogs battled back to force a fifth set.
Portola players celebrated on the court after the match with a large following of students.
“Pacifica Christian played outstanding,” Graham said. “They passed a lot better than we anticipated and they probably won the serve and pass game in the end. Our defense just stepped up in the right moments and got a couple digs. It worked out really well.”
One of the Portola seniors Kian Wojtowich, was among the standouts.
“It feels so surreal with how we rallied the whole time coming back in that fifth set,” said Wojtowich, who had 13 kills. “That fourth set, we rallied together and said, ‘this is not our last set.’ We got a ton of seniors on this team and all the seniors, except for two, are starters and we really just want to do it for each other and play hard and if we were going to lose, we were going to do it in a fun way and that’s how we play best is in a fun manner.”
Portola also got strong efforts from Kevin Gong, who had 12 kills and Eugene Jung, who had 10 kills.
After dropping the first set, Pacifica Christian rallied to win the next two. Danny Dillon and Buzz Hodson each had a service ace in the sets.
Hodson, Knox Vail and Bennet Penticuff stood out for Pacifica Christian, which was making its second straight appearance in the quarterfinals. The Tritons lose six seniors off this year’s squad.
Pacifica Christian opened with playoff victories over Flintridge Prep and Xavier Prep. Portola defeated Oxford Academy and Bishop Diego to reach the quarterfinals.
—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
