Perfection is seldom seen in any sport, but the Palisades High boys volleyball team achieved that in the first set of last Wednesday’s Western League match against visiting Hamilton.
The Dolphins received serve to open the match and outside hitter Akhil Tangutur hammered a kill down the line to give the Dolphins a side out.
Marcus Partain stepped to the baseline and proceeded to reel off 24 straight points—pounding 10 aces along the way—and Tangutur had nine kills to complete a 25-0 shutout, almost unheard of in the era of rally scoring.
“It isn’t like we were trying to do that, it just kind of happened,” said Pali High assistant Dustyn Woropay, who coached the Dolphins in head coach Carlos Gray’s absence. “I figured that at some point he’d miss a serve, but he never did. When we got to 19 or 20 points I considered subbing him out, but I figured we’d just let Marcus keep going. It doesn’t happen very often and I think the team would’ve been mad at me if I subbed him out there. I don’t think the guys had seen that before, either. It used to happen a lot more with the old side-out scoring system.”
Palisades took the last two sets 25-8, 25-9 to finish the sweep.
On Monday, the Dolphins almost lost the first set but prevailed 25-23, 25-18, 25-19 at University. The Wildcats nearly took a set off Palisades in the teams’ first league meeting as well before losing 25-11, 26-24, 25-11 back on Feb. 27.
Palisades was 22-1 entering yesterday’s contest versus Fairfax and had won 11 straight matches.
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