The Burroughs High boys’ volleyball hasn’t won the Pacific League championship the last two seasons and the Bears certainly want to return to the days when winning the title was the norm.
Thursday evening, Burroughs did not start off strong, but picked things up and finished much stronger, winning 27-25, 25-20, 25-18 over Crescenta Valley.
“As much as we cleaned things up there at the end, we still committed 16 errors in that last game,” Burroughs coach Joel Brinton said. “The positives were great, but how do we clean up some of the negatives.
“This senior group has a sense of ownership about wanting to get back to being league champs. We don’t really talk about it. We talk about it, we talk about how do we become our best. We think the natural byproduct of that is winning league.”
Burroughs (12-2 overall, 3-0 in league), which had won 12 consecutive league titles prior to 2023, fell behind early in the first game and looked like it might lose, as it trailed 21-16.
But sophomore Noah Duffield and senior Benji Ly came up big in getting the Bears back on level terms.
They continued later in the set, as Duffield, Ly and Caiden Shrade had the final three kills of the game.
Burroughs came out stronger in the second game and never trailed.
Marco Santiago-Dorn came up with a big kill to make it 23-17.
Ly had two kills to finish off the set.
“We know what we are capable of and that first set was not it,” Ly, a four-year varsity player, said. “We knew we missed a lot of serves and once we picked that up everything clicked more. We had a lot of areas to pick up in, but serving was the main one.”
Burroughs got through the third game much quicker, even though it still had lots of errors.
Crescenta Valley is now 9-8 overall, 1-1 in league.
The Bears will now play in a tournament in San Diego next week during Spring Break.
