Volleyball
Acorns’ rally falls short in 3-0 loss
Live Oak puts together a flurry in the 3rd set but stumbles against prospect
Cheeto Barrera
Sports Editor
morgan hill—Live Oak coach Danny Falcao said his team couldn’t get out of its own heads for the first two sets.
But the Acorns settled down in the third set and started to play their game and the results were immediate.
Unfortunately for Live Oak, it wasn’t enough to stave off a sweep at the hands of Prospect in a 14-25, 16-25, 25-27 loss.
“A week off probably didn’t help us, but we’re a winning tea and our record shows we’re a winning team,” Falcao said. “Honestly, it was a good match. It probably should have been one or the other. They’re a great school with a great volleyball program.”
After going down 2-0 to Prospect, Live Oak’s defense came to life.
After an ace from David Roster gave Live Oak its first lead of the match, blocks from JR Salvador and Symon Tan helped bump the acorns to a 6-4 lead.
After some unforced errors pushed Prospect to an 11-8 lead, Live Oak went on a mini run thanks to blocks from Jonathan Weisburg and Tan plus Roster’s second ace of the contest pushed Live Oak to a 14-13 advantage.
From there the match turned into a dog fight.
Neither side went on anything longer than a three-point run as there were 10 ties and five lead changes just in the next 25 points.
The Acorns had kills from Jon Vu, Weisburg, Roster and Tan as neither side enjoyed more than a two-point advantage.
Live Oak twice served game point to force a fourth, but unforced errors kept the Panthers alive.
Finally, after the Acorns were up 25-24 serving game point, Prospect stole the advantage back with a kill and two Live Oak errors to end the contest.
In each of the first two games, the Acorns actually kept things within striking distance, trailing by one after the 15th point in the first set and down by four after the 26th point.
In both instances, however, Prospect went for the jugular and the Acorns couldn’t recover.
In the first game, after pulling to within one at 8-7, Live Oak watched as Prospect went on an 11-1 scoring run to put things out of reach.
Same thing in the second set, as Live Oak recovered from going down by eight to pull to within 15-11. At that point, Prospect went on a 9-2 run to serve game point.
Although Live Oak fended off the Panthers for three serves, Prospect put the game away with a kill from Justin Lynn for the final point.
Despite the loss, Live Oak still sits at 4-3 in Santa Teresa Division play.
The Acorns have already surpassed last year’s win total, were Live Oak went 3-9 in league play.
“The boys are coming into their own. They went from not winning a game to now having a positive season already halfway through,” Falcao said.
Falcao said the difference this season has largely been in the attitude of the boys.
He gave credit to the Acorns buying into his philosophy of being a professional on the court an in the approach to the game.
“They have to have that mentality of if you want something, you have to earn it; it’s not going to be handed to you,” Falcao said. “Some other clubs will hand (players) a position, but here they have to battle for their position. … That way they’ll have that battle hardened mentality.”
A lot of that credit goes to the on the court leadership of libero Pietro Capaldi, who puts himself out there for every point on the court.
“He has the most drive of anybody,” Falcao said. “He can pick up the ball, make plays and make plays happen that way we can earn the win. I can say 100 percent of our wins are because of his defense.”
At one point during the match, Capaldi went racing after an errant ball that was heading for the stands.
He caught up to it and hit back into play just a split second before colliding with the bleachers and going head over heels to the floor.
