This year, the boys volleyball team is ready and hungry for a bounce-back season, after being disappointed in the MCAL semifinals last year.

One of their top player’s, senior Danny Roland has come back to play volleyball in his last year. Roland is not the only one returning with a big splash. Senior Brendan Corr also took off his junior year and is now back and better than ever, as one of the league’s top players and servers with a 95 serve completion percentage.

“We have four returning starters from last year. Danny and Brendan are back. They have experience from their first two years at Drake, so our starting six is very experienced, and we are pretty legit.” junior Libero Darius Sadaat said.

One of those four returning starters is Eric Stoner; many tip the senior for MCAL Player of the Year. Last year he finished second in the all league MVP race. With this lineup, the team expects nothing short of another MCAL championship.

Last year, the boys were devastated by Redwood in the MCAL semifinals. This year, the team is 16-2 in all competitions, and 13-1 in league with their singular 3-0 loss to Marin Catholic.

“It was partly because we were introducing new players, getting a good base for the new players and our team focus on winning went down. We tried putting a lot of effort in but our execution really wasn’t there during the game.” junior Andy Rohosy said.

The score wasn’t totally indicative of the game. Each set was really close, but the boys lost all three. This bump in the road hasn’t affected them since the boys are on a 12 game win streak in league and are steamrolling through the competition.

The regular season has ended and the team is tied for first going into the playoffs after securing their spot by beating Marin Catholic in the last game of the regular season. The game was crucial making the season series split 1-1 between the rivals and puts the Pirates in first place, as well as a great spot for playoffs.

The boys hope to have success in the playoffs and their first game will be against Redwood in the upcoming semifinals on May 2nd. Results were unavailable at press time.