PREP ROUNDUP : Capistrano Valley Defeats El Toro in Girls’ Volleyball

Though his team didn’t exactly play vintage volleyball, Capistrano Valley Coach John Gipe wasn’t complaining about the Cougars’ four-game victory over El Toro Tuesday night.

Allyson Carpenter had 17 kills as the Cougars, ranked fourth in Orange County, defeated the third-ranked Chargers, 16-18, 15-11, 15-6, 15-12, in a South Coast League match at El Toro.

“That was a pretty sloppy match,” Gipe said. “There were a lot of hitting and passing errors and we just couldn’t seem to get any rhythm going.”

El Toro (7-3, 3-1 in league) couldn’t get anything going, either. The Chargers committed 19 of their 29 hitting errors in the last two games.

Capistrano Valley (9-3, 3-0) built a 6-0 lead and cruised to an easy victory in the third game. El Toro had 10 costly hitting errors in the game.

The Chargers’ problems continued early in the fourth game. They had two hitting errors and two net violations as they fell behind, 6-1.

But Wendy Balut had four kills and three aces and Mary Valenciano added four kills to key El Toro’s fourth-game comeback. El Toro tied it, 11-11, but lost the next three points on a Valenciano hitting error, a Carpenter kill and a net violation. Tobi Roquemore ended the match with a kill, one of her nine for the match.

Balut led El Toro with 12 kills and five aces, and Kira Kneitel added eight kills and two blocks. Lesli Steinert added four aces for the Chargers.

El Toro sorely missed starting outside hitter Jaime Smith, who severely sprained her right ankle and is expected to be sidelined two to three weeks.