Marin Grote has been a key figure for the Burroughs girls’ volleyball team the last four years. Tuesday night the 6-foot-4 outside hitter concluded the regular season of her career as the Indians defeated visiting Burbank High 25-15, 25-21, 19-25, 25-14.
In the process, Burroughs captured the Pacific League title outright, finishing with a 13-1 in league mark.
Both schools will learn of their playoff fate Thursday when the CIF Southern Section releases the volleyball pairings.
“I love these games. It’s confidence boosting and it is fun,” said Grote, who committed to the University of Washington as a sophomore. “It is a crosstown rivalry, how can it not be. It was a good match, a good rivalry game. Burbank put up a good competition but we were ready. We’ve been preparing for this.”
Burroughs (23-5 overall) received 17 kills from Grote, 10 from junior Juliana Van Loo and six from sophomore Lydia Grote.
“We played well early. We kind of put our guard down a little bit. We made a lot of errors in game three,” Burroughs Coach Edwin Real said.
Despite the league title and a guaranteed first round match in the CIF playoffs next week, Real said his team isn’t where he expected it would be.
“Not quite. We have some things we want to take care of,” he said. “Once we iron some things out and re-focus (we’ll be okay).”
Burbank coach Karl Rojo praised his team for remaining tough. The Bulldogs finish the regular season 10-4 in league to finish in third place.
“They hung in there. They kept fighting and they kept believing in themselves,” Rojo said. “They were aggressive with the swing, they were aggressive with the service line, the passing was great that third set.”
Overall he was pleased to see the program going in the right direction.
“We told our players to keep their minds on track for CIF. We did a great job this year in league finishing third. It is better than the last two years,” he said.
Burroughs broke away from Burbank in the first game after the two teams were tied at 9.
Burbank put up a tougher fight in the second game, keeping it tied until 13.
A kill by Jewel Musich clinched the second game for the Indians.
Burbank dominated the third game after Burroughs closed the gap to 9-8.
A pair of aces from Erin Lashkari and a pair of kills from Melissa Daniel helped Burbank during the run that saw the Bulldogs go on a 7-0 run.
A kill by Daniel forced a fourth game.
Burroughs took the early lead in the fourth and didn’t have too much trouble. A pair of back-to-back kills from Burbank’s Suzy Torosyan gave Burbank some brief momentum.
Burroughs finished things off with a kill from Ricki Patenaude.
