First published in the Sept. 11 print issue of the Glendale News-Press.
The Glendale High School girls’ volleyball team was swept at Burbank by scores of 25-15, 25-15 and 25-16 on Tuesday afternoon.
“Serving and passing, that’s always going to be a big thing for us is making sure we have the ball control,” said Patrick Tyler, Burbank’s head coach. “I think we were firing on all cylinders for the first time since the tournament.”
The Bulldogs maintained a controlling lead for the entirety of the first set, which resulted in a 25-15 victory for Burbank.
The second set saw the Bulldogs score six times in a row and jump out to an early 9-1 lead. Glendale (4-4 overall record, 0-3 in league) mounted a brief comeback later in the set as Aleina Manaois served when the Nitros scored three consecutive times to cut Burbank’s lead to 14-8. The Bulldogs continued to pull ahead for another 25-15 victory.
The third set replicated the second, as Burbank jumped out to an early 6-0 lead, capped by a strong kill by Burbank’s Gabby Damroze. Burbank’s Madison Gomez punctuated the 25-16 set victory with an ace, locking down the 3-0 sweep for the Bulldogs.
It was a challenging match for Glendale. Not only did they play Burbank on the road, but they were down six key players: Nicole Parsegian, Sophia Tran, Samantha Songco, Gabriella Aloyan, Sofia Safarian and Anastasia Sardaryan.
“Obviously, it didn’t go the way we wanted it to, but I think we would have done really well if we had our whole team today,” said Marji Keyfauver, Glendale’s head coach.
Despite the loss, Glendale had several standout performances from its reserve players.
Manaois had a team-high six kills and Arianna Vargas followed closely behind with four. Maya Aghakhani and Gayane Amroyan each added one kill.
Defensively, Vargas and Manaois continued to lead the way with seven and six digs, respectively. Aghakhani also tallied three digs.
Glendale snapped its three-match losing streak on Sept. 8 with a 3-0 sweep against visiting San Gabriel in a nonleague contest. Arcadia hosted the Nitros in a league game last night, but the result was unavailable by the News-Press’ deadline.
