Westlake Can’t Knock Royal Off Balance

Bob Ferguson looked at the stat sheet and then playfully challenged the media.

The Royal High boys’ volleyball coach smiled and said: “You tell me why we won.”

OK, but no guarantees.

The most-important numbers Friday night was the score: Royal won a 15-8, 15-6, 15-8 Marmonte League match against Westlake at Royal.

But it was the Highlanders’ balanced stats that created the unbalanced match.

Jim Bonelli, 10 kills. Joe Olsen and Marc Chaffee, nine kills each. Kevin Schommer, a career-high 13 kills.

Deep. Talented. Versatile.

And Olsen, the 6-foot-4 middle blocker who recently committed to BYU, was a decoy for most of the night, as Royal consistently went to the outside.

“We didn’t have to go to the gun [Olsen] tonight,” said Ferguson, whose Highlanders (5-0, 4-0 in league play) are ranked seventh among Southern Section Division I teams. “We can play even better.”

So can Westlake, the 10th-ranked Division I team.

The Warriors (3-1, 3-1) had trouble serving and had 12 errors in the first two games.

“When you serve cupcakes over the net, it’s an easy sideout,” Westlake Coach Mark Greenblatt said.

Another problem was Royal’s defensive block, which sometimes tripled up on Westlake star Jason Lee.

Lee finished with 17 kills but had seven errors.

“They didn’t have any weak points,” said Lee, who added seven blocks.

Westlake genuinely expected to beat Royal, which has lost only one Marmonte match in seven seasons.

“In the past it’s been a shot in the dark,” Lee said, “but we came into this thinking we can win.”

Westlake had two shots at taking a game.

Lee tallied two kills and a block during a first-game run that trimmed Royal’s 9-3 lead to 9-8.

But Schommer helped Royal score the final seven points, tossing down three of his six kills in the game.

Royal also played peekaboo in the third game, jumping out to a 10-3 lead, watching it get trimmed to 11-8, and then reeling off the final four points of the match.

Schommer had the final two kills for Royal.

“I’ve been waiting my whole life to play and I finally am,” said the 6-1 Schommer, who played sparingly in the back row last season but looked at home on the outside Friday.

Westlake gets another chance against Royal next month--”I expect it to be a much better game,” Greenblatt said--but Round 1 goes to the Highlanders.