El Camino sweeps past Vaqueros 3-0

Five days after hitting a season-high .482, SBCC recorded a season-low .065 on Wednesday night in a 3-0 men's volleyball loss to El Camino at the Sports Pavilion. The scores were 25-22, 25-20, 26-24.

Sean Reynaert, a 6-5 freshman from Belgium, led the Vaqueros (7-4, 2-2 WSC) with 11 kills, four blocks and a .368 hitting percentage. SBCC had 24 hitting errors and seven service errors with one ace.

"Our offense was tragic tonight," said coach Matt Jones. "We couldn't buy a kill in our transition offense and Sean was the only guy who had any rhythm. We had a little trouble with serve receive. Our defense was exactly what we wanted, we just couldn't score in transition."

Casey Wood topped the Warriors (11-1, 4-1) with 17 kills and a .353 percentage.

El Camino took an 11-6 lead in the opener before the Vaqueros tied it at 15 on a solo block by Shaft Wesley. The visitors regained control with a 5-1 run that made it 20-16. SBCC got within two a couple of times before Peter Sarmiento capped the 25-22 win with a kill.

The Warriors took leads of 11-6 and 21-16 on the way to winning the second set. The third set was the best of the night with 13 ties and five lead changes. SBCC took a 9-8 advantage on a kill by 6-9 middle Jeremy Berch and there were seven ties after that but the Vaqueros could never get the lead.

Trailing 18-15, Reynaert caught fire with an emphatic spike followed by two blocks. The Vaqueros kept tying the score but El Camino had an answer each time. Reynaert fought off match point with a kill off the block that tied it at 24. Wood drilled a kill and then served for match point No. 2. The Warriors won it when a Vaquero spike went just beyond the back line.

"We gave ourselves opportunities to earn points and we couldn't do it," Jones added. "Error after error after error. We'd dig a ball, then we wouldn't get a great set. Instead of just throwing it back over and letting our defense play, we tried to do too much and we'd hit it out-of-bounds."

The Vaqueros travel to Moorpark on Friday for a 6 p.m. match.