That resilience never fully showed up Thursday night as the eight-seed Lions were knocked out 3-0 (25-19, 25-23, 25-10) in their North Coast Section quarterfinal at top-seed Northgate in Walnut Creek.
”It came down to errors,” Liberty head boys volleyball coach Haylie Bustamante said. “We made more errors than they did.”
”In that second set, once we tried to catch up and do all we can, it just all crumbled with everything that we can do and everything that we can use,” senior Tyler DeGuzman said. “It just doesn’t match up against a team like that.”
Although the task ahead of them was a tall one against a Broncos team that went 36-3 in the regular season, Liberty held their own as best as they could through the first two sets.
The Lions opened each of the three sets with the opening point and went on quick runs in the first two sets. However, Northgate rallied time and time again, taking advantage of Lions miscues. In each set, once the Broncos took the lead, they never looked back. The Lions opened the night with a 3-1 lead in the opening set. Northgate rallied to tie at 3-3. Liberty grabbed the lead right back quickly off of a kill by Carter Brown to go up 4-3. However, Northgate went on a 8-3 run to take an 11-7 lead almost immediately and held on the rest of the way for the win.
The start of the second set was similar. Liberty opened with a 2-0 lead only for errors to cost them momentum as the Broncos went on a 5-1 run to take a 5-3 lead. Mason Villaroman’s ace tied the set at 9-9 as the Lions rallied. However, Northgate once again went on a run, this time 4-0, to take a 13-9 lead against what looked like a dazed Liberty team that didn’t know what hit them.
Liberty opened 2-0 in the third once again, but Northgate put the match away, finding open space in Liberty’s side of the net and outscored the Lions 25-8 the rest of the way to end Liberty's season.
”The first two sets, they played great, but they were beatable,” Liberty junior Zachary Sisney said. “They really turned it on (in the third set) and we just couldn’t keep up. Got to give credit to them, they’re such a deep roster. Every single person on that team belongs on that team.”
For everything that the Lions have endured this season — missing players due to various reasons like injuries and illness, the loss at Heritage that ended the team's undefeated run in league, battling Deer Valley to hang onto the Bay Valley Athletic League title, defeating Granada in the playoff opener on Tuesday — Thursday night resembled the amateur boxer in the ring with a multi-time heavyweight champion.
”We’ve never really handled something like this before,” Lions junior Brendan Beresford said. “(Northgate is) just an all-around good team. And we haven’t really seen that.”
“Northgate is a solid team, for sure,” Bustamante said. “They’re a good team, and we have to give them that respect. But we definitely hoped to give them a little better fight than we did.”
The Lions end their season in a similar fashion to how they did a year ago, going 1-1 in the playoffs, falling at a top seed. Now the focus turns to next season, with the Lions expecting to have eight seniors returning for the 2026 campaign.
”We’re hoping they put in some good work in the offseason,” Bustamante said.
Upcoming seniors like Sisney and Beresford know that there’s a lot of work ahead if they are to make the elusive NCS playoff run next year.
”We really have to hit the gym.” Beresford said. “Our bodies need to be strengthened, our minds need to be strengthened, and that’s really how we’re gonna win it. As long as we play our game and we play hard, I think we will be on to win NCS or State. We definitely can be a contender for that.”
For Sisney, next season represents a lot more.
”Four or five of us have been together since we were freshmen,” he explained. “W... Click here to read full article
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