Strong season for Glendale High girls’ volleyball ends

One of the most successful seasons in recent memory for the Glendale High girls’ volleyball team came to a conclusion Tuesday evening.

The Pacific League fourth-place Nitros fell in the first round of the CIF Southern Section Division II-A playoffs, 25-10, 25-13, 25-11 to host Woodland Hills Louisville, the divisional top seed, on Tuesday evening.

With the win, the Sunshine League champion Royals (21-5) secured a spot in Thursday’s second round versus Empire League champion Cypress (10-4), which dispatched of Oxnard Pacifica, also on Tuesday.

A coin flip Wednesday morning will determine which school will host the next playoff match.

As for Glendale, the Nitros finished with a 12-12 record and advanced to the first round of the playoffs, a place the program had not been for quite some time.

“We ran into a pretty good team and we sort of knew what to expect,” Glendale first-year Coach Ta’ase Mose said. “They just did everything really well and we knew it was going to be real tough.

“This was the best team we’ve faced all year, better than anyone else on the schedule. Yup. They were just dominant overall and did a lot of things right. We can’t be disappointed.”

There were two big differences for the Nitros entering this postseason in comparison to last year.

For starters, Glendale took fourth place in the Pacific League behind Arcadia (24-5), Burbank (22-5) and Burroughs (12-13) and, in the process, earned an outright postseason bid a year removed from having to wait a week before being given an at-large berth.

The Nitros can also revel in the fact that the team advanced to the first round by picking up its first playoff victory in at least a decade, 3-2, over host Crossroads in Saturday’s wild-card round.

The year prior, it was the Nitros who suffered the heartbreak of a 3-2 loss to Rio Hondo Prep in the wild-card round.

“From the beginning of the season, we set our goal to make the playoffs with an automatic spot and we did that,” Mose said. “We met our goals and we exceeded our expectations.

“I’m really very proud of the girls and what they were able to accomplish. This was a great year.”