The PCS Boys Volleyball team has a difficult task this year: rebuilding. Every year, sports teams lose some of their top players as high school graduates, but this particular year feels like a hard hit to Boys Volleyball.

Seniors Zach Fishman and Owen Hedrick are team captains this year. Fishman shared some of his thoughts on the upcoming season.

Fishman says the league looks tough, and the team will be contending for a top spot. “It’s going to be a lot more challenging than the year before, because we lost a lot of seniors and this year we have 6 freshmen on the roster, and several of them start,” said Fishman. “So it’ll be a rebuilding year for sure but we’re going to do our best and try to have a better team for years to come.”

The new faces are easy to spot out on the court—“freshmen players Phil, Alex, James, Sam, Josh, Skyler, and Andrew are already showing promise as new members of the team”, said senior player Christian Bouchard.

The team is hoping to improve from their disappointing first game of the season, which may serve as a lesson.

“The seniors didn’t show up, that’s all I have to say about that,” said Hedrick. “We need to get some real leadership going on. We can’t expect to go into a game with no leaders. We really need someone like Chris Paul to run the floor. We can’t just have a team of Steph Currys.”

Boys Volleyball also faces an issue out of their control, which is getting gym time to practice. Due to other groups vying for use of the gym, and not all of them intra-school at that, it’s proving difficult to receive an adequate allotment of practice time.

The team’s coach, Harlina Manley, said that the team has very low priority in the gym. “Badminton is basically taking over the first hour and a half.”

“We’re an SCCAL team and we’re getting pushed out by a club, said Hedrick. “This year it’s badminton, last year it was fencing. They would take our gym time and we had to go practice at Mission Hill a lot.”

Boys Volleyball is not the only sport that is having trouble. Girls Basketball, as well, has historically had difficulty finding time to practice due to other groups.

The toughest team is clearly going to be Harbor. “They bring a lot of energy, they’re scrappy, they have a lot of athleticism, and we’re just gonna have to build our team around constructing a way to create an aura to rival their aura,” said Fishman.

Thursday, March 12th’s game was canceled, so the team will continue on to their tournament at Aptos this Saturday, March 14 at 8:00am. The full season’s game schedule can be found here:  http://www.pacificcollegiate.com/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=258158&type=d&pREC_ID=704668