PALOS VERDES ESTATES \u2013 Inside the gymnasium at Palos Verdes High, the sounds of sneakers on hardwood, whistles cutting through rallies and crowd reaction defined the pace of a high-stakes matchup between Palos Verdes and Valencia.<\/p>\n
Palos Verdes (26-10) entered their quarterfinal bout with Valencia undefeated at home and extended their consecutive win streak to 13, taking down the Vikings 26-24, 25-18, 26-24.<\/p>\n
PV will be on the road in Saturday\u2019s semifinals against either Roosevelt or St. John Bosco. Their quarterfinal will be played Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to the semis, we\u2019re going to train as hard as we can the next couple of days,\u201d senior outside hitter Brendan Steuerwald said.<\/p>\n
Steuerwald, a member of last year\u2019s team that was eliminated in the opening round of the playoffs said the difference this season has been the group\u2019s chemistry and growth, along with additions to the coaching staff.<\/p>\n
The senior said that spending time off the volleyball court with teammates has been a contributing factor to developing a connection that seeped its way to a team that has reached the Final Four.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all have been hanging out, having team bonding, getting really connected as a group and just putting our best foot forward,\u201d Steuerwald added.<\/p>\n
The Sea Kings punched their ticket to the quarterfinals after sweeping Sage Hill last Friday, continuing a playoff run powered by kills from Zade Innocent and Steuerwald and a defensive effort from libero Brady Gonnerman and Cole Harper during their bout against a Valencia team who clinched the Foothill League title.<\/p>\n
Toward the end of the first set, Valencia went for a kill that drifted out of the court after the ball was deflected off of a Palos Verdes defender \u2013 but the rally was far from over. Heroic efforts by Harper and Gonnerman on defense kept the ball in play, leading to a kill by Palos Verdes to take the first set 26-24.<\/p>\n
Later, the Sea Kings capitalized on a service error early in the second set by Valencia, leading to a kill from Innocent and six kills from Steuerwald. Midway through that set, Valencia closed the scoring gap with an ace serve from Cavanaugh Bourdas Henn to make it a 20-16 game.<\/p>\n
Valencia middle blocker Gavan Miranda acknowledged that a slow start and errors at the net played a role in the loss to the Sea Kings. Despite the struggles, Miranda emphasized team chemistry remained a strength throughout the match.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was pretty quiet on the court when I should have been louder,\u201d Miranda said. \u201cOur team chemistry is always there \u2013 it\u2019s not something I found in other sports I\u2019ve played.\u201d<\/p>\n
For first-year head coach Peter Gonnerman, the win carried significance as Palos Verdes continued its postseason push.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re playing the best volleyball of the year by far right now \u2013 that was probably the biggest win of the year against a super tough team,\u201d Gonnerman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PALOS VERDES ESTATES \u2013 Inside the gymnasium at Palos Verdes High, the sounds of sneakers on hardwood, whistles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10163,10183,10184,10185,396,95],"class_list":{"0":"post-18411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-valencia","8":"tag-high-school-sports","9":"tag-high-school-volleyball","10":"tag-palos-verdes-peninsula-news","11":"tag-pv-sports","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-valencia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}