Granada Hills Puts Silencer on Chatsworth

Things didn’t begin very well for Chatsworth High on Wednesday, what with the semi-tyrannical bus driver insisting on absolute silence during the ride to Granada Hills for a boys’ volleyball match.

It got worse for the Chancellors, defending Northwest Valley Conference champions, who quietly dropped a 15-11, 15-5, 15-8 conference match to Granada Hills in 66 minutes.

The Chancellors couldn’t pass, serve or hit--blueprints for disaster--while Granada Hills did all three with ease and efficiency.

Looks like the Highlanders have survived the loss of Donald Puathasnanon, who helped them advance to the City Section 4-A title match last season before taking his 40-inch vertical leap to UCLA.

The Highlanders (5-0, 2-0 in conference play) have six fundamentally sound starters and 6-foot-4 middle blocker Achi Yaffe off the bench. Yaffe stymied the Chancellors with five blocks, four in the third game, and outside hitter Chris Tran supplied 13 kills.

“We’ve been looking forward to this match since the beginning of time,” said Tran, who lives in the Chatsworth area but attends the magnet school at Granada Hills. “We were the fired-up team on this court.”

Chatsworth (2-3, 1-1) looked disinterested at times and, with a .069 percentage, hit like it too.

But the Chancellors’ ultimate downfall was passing. Normally an exception, shanked serve receptions became a rule. Chatsworth can expect plenty of passing drills at today’s practice.

“About three hours of them,” said Coach Bud Dow, who called the match the Chancellors’ worst of the season in terms of passing.

“We couldn’t get the ball to the setter. There’s really no other solution. We just didn’t pass.”

Aside from five serving errors in the first game, Granada Hills had few problems and left the mistakes to Chatsworth. The Highlanders took a 6-0 lead in the second game with the help of five Chatsworth hitting errors.

The Highlanders, who swept past Chatsworth in last season’s City 4-A semifinals, erased a 5-4 deficit in the third game with nine consecutive points.

Paul DiSimone and Shawn Litchfield had nine kills each for the Highlanders.

“It’s hard for me to point to one guy,” Granada Hills Coach Tom Harp said.

“Last year, we had one star, now we have six players.”

Chris Wilson had nine kills and three other Chancellors had seven, including Kevin Dawes, who made a recruiting visit to Cal State Northridge on Tuesday.