Saturday’s City championship final against Granada Hills represented a chance for revenge for the Palisades High boys volleyball team’but the Dolphins just couldn’t capitalize. From the outset, Pali fought hard but seemed to have trouble finding its rhythm offensively, ultimately falling to the Highlanders in straight sets, 25-20, 25-21, 25-17. In the end, head coach Chris Forrest was left comparing Pali’s potential to be great to that another talented L.A. area team that fell short in the postseason. ’Our season kind of mirrored that of the Lakers,’ he said. ‘All season, we talked about needing to clean a lot of things up, how we were just scrapping by in so many games. ’I told them, ‘When you get to your biggest challenge, if you bring you’re ‘C’ game against Granada, you’re going to lose. And when I gave an exit interview to our seniors, [middle blocker] Jayant Subrahmanyam came up to me and said, ‘You were right. We were just like the Lakers.” In the first set of the final, Pali stayed sharp early, as a pair of Grant Pugatch kills gave the Dolphins a 6-5 lead. But Pali soon dug a hole, falling behind 14-11 and forcing Forrest to call timeout. Alex Frapech came out and used a dunk to win the next point, but from there, it was mostly Granada. Trailing 21-14, the Dolphins fired back with four straight points on Chance Earnest’s jump-serve to make it 21-18’igniting the Pali cheering section and forcing Granada coach Tom Harp to call a timeout to settle his team down. It worked. The Highlanders won the next point, before a Palisades net violation at 24-20 handed Granada the first set. In the second, Pali came out with more energy and fire, taking an early 7-4 lead as senior captain Jack Scharf started to get into a rhythm serving. From there, though, Dolphin mistakes and violations piled up, turning a 15-15 tie into a 24-18 edge for the Highlanders. Pali staved off four set points until a Victor Carson kill closed out the set, 25-21. In the third, the Dolphins again took an early 5-3 lead, but Granada battled back for a 7-6 lead. Pali tied it up again at 12-12 following a big serve from senior Denton Van Duzer, but would never take the lead, as the Highlanders went on a 5-0 run. Granada’s Robert Docter’s kill closed out the match. ’We definitely played tentative, out of sync,’ Forrest said. ‘Nerves were a big part of it. We didn’t execute anything we worked on and our offense was way out of whack. ’This year it was clear, Granada came to play and we didn’t.’
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