York Sunday News April 16 2000

Central volleyball coach sees reason for optimism

By DICK VANOLINDA
Dispatch/Sunday News

His team's day ended with a 15-5 loss to powerful Hempfield in the quarterfinals of the Panther Classic.

But Central boys' volleyball coach Bruce Koller saw the Panthers do a lot of things he liked before running into the No. 1-ranked team in the state.

Central went 6-2 in the pool play part of its own tournament and then defeated Warwick, 15-9, before being eliminated by Hempfield.

"We've been trying get more offense out of more people, and today, we found that," Koller said. I think we stepped up in a lot of areas. Our serve was tougher than it has been, and we were more consistent with serve reception."

Koller knew before the tournament that it was going to be extremely difficult to advance deep into the bracket. The field included seven of the top 10 teams in state. None of the seven are from York County.

"North Allegheny's won all the tournaments it's played in so far this year, and Hempfield has won all of theirs," Koller said. "This is a really tough tournament. There were a few easy games for teams, but not many."

York Suburban had a hard time with Penn Hills in the quarterfinals. The Pittsburgh-area team refused to let hardly any balls hit the floor on their side of the net.

But Trojans' coach Bob Laird was impressed with his team's effort in compiling a 6-2 pool play record.

"We split with North Allegheny (No. 3 in the state)," Laird said. "And against Penn Hills, we hit some balls that are normally down (on the floor), but they dug them. We're getting better and more consistent. This whole thing is

a journey to see how well you're competing at the end of the year."

While Central and York Suburban were advancing out of their pools, Northeastern was moving out of its pool with a 4-4 mark.

The Bobcats swept two games from Altoona, split two with Montour and Penn Manor and lost two to Emmaus.

Hempfield defeated Lake Lehman, 12-15, 15-8, 15-9, to win the tournament championship.

York Suburban's Ryan Fisher, Central's Austin Siewert and Mike Dankanich and Dallastown's Chris Kraft were named to the All-Tournament Team.