A top notch finish in league and in the CIF division rankings is what the Garden Grove boys volleyball team (7-4) has its sights set on.
“My goal is to be in the top four of our CIF division,” said Grove’s head coach, Frankie Perales.
Currently, the Argonauts are ranked seventh in Division 4 of the CIF Southern Section. The Argos started out at the fifth spot in the rankings but dropped due to a rocky start in pre-league matches.
A top notch finish in league and in the CIF division rankings is what the Garden Grove boys volleyball team (7-4) has its sights set on.
“My goal is to be in the top four of our CIF division,” said Grove’s head coach, Frankie Perales.
Currently, the Argonauts are ranked seventh in Division 4 of the CIF Southern Section. The Argos started out at the fifth spot in the rankings but dropped due to a rocky start in pre-league matches.
“We struggled at first in the year because I had to mix up the lineup a bit due to some players’ grades,” said Perales. “But my boys are starting to click and get into a rhythm.”
The Argos were definitely in a hard-hitting, clutch-digging rhythm deserving of a top four rank when they faced a fairly young Cypress High (0-2) squad last week.
Garden Grove swept all three sets against the Centurions on March 19 with the set scores: 25-7, 25-11 and 25-19.
The three sets saw the Argos overpower in all aspects of the game. Their serving, hitting, digging, and blocking were on another level to Cypress.
The Centurions did rally themselves back from their showing in the first set but the Argos’ exceptional strike force never gave them a fighting chance to win a set.
Argos’ All-CIF player Arturo Alday could not be stopped by the Centurions. His vertical leap and ability to drill the ball almost vertically down on Cypress’ half of the court just pitted the Centurions.
Even when Cypress finally drew keen on how to block Alday, his awareness showed through on the next play with a clever tip over the full-stretched fingers of Centurion blockers.
“I told him to be smart,” said Perales.
It wasn’t all Alday, even though he had a great deal of success in attack. The entire Argos team hit well, and not only that, but the Argos converted a lot of points on the serving end also.
“Cypress is rebuilding right now,” said Perales. “It was a pretty easy win though.”
For the Centurions, the biggest take-away from the game was experienced gained from facing last year’s Division 5 CIF playoff finalist.
“We’re a young team,” said Cypress’ head coach Aric Anderson. “and today was our first match against a strong team.”
Anderson said he let his team play the entire first set without calling timeout because he wanted to see how his side responded to adversity.
“I wanted them to see what happens when we don’t do the right things,” said Anderson.
Garden Grove will be looking to keep on doing the right things this week when they face Rancho Alamitos (1-3) on March 26 in its first league contest. The Argonauts will be quite confident going into the game as Rancho has never won a match against Garden Grove since Perales took over as head coach in 2011.
