On Thursday Mar. 16, Irvington’s boys’ volleyball team faced off against Mission San Jose at home. The Varsity team narrowly lost 2 sets to 3 sets while the JV team rolled to a victory 2 sets to none. The Varsity team currently has a record of 1-3 in the league.

After winning the first set 25-20, the Varsity team dropped the next two sets, falling behind 1-2 in the overall game. The third set that gave Mission the advantage was extremely close, pushing to 29-31. Several critical mistakes and excellent performances caused the set to continue although Mission finally got the edge on Irvington. The Vikings came back to win the fourth set 25-22, tieing the score 2-2 and forcing the teams to play a fifth set. The fifth set was much shorter than the previous four, ending with a score of 11-15 in favor of Mission. The game closed with a final score of 2-3 in favor of Mission.

“The main thing that needed to be improved in our game was how we set up our defense. Whenever they were able to hit, we needed to make sure we got both our blockers in the air for the hit and the back row to get the open area. Another thing that we could improve on was getting perfect passes to set the middles who kill pretty much every ball set to them,” captain Rajan Jobanputra (12) said.

In response to the game, the Varsity team plans on working more on their defense as it has held them back for a long time. In addition, players plan on keeping up their morale so that the team doesn’t go on long losing streaks.

The team performed very well on the offensive front, however, as Irvington players were able to get the ball past Mission blockers consistently. Also, serving was vastly improved, with five aces overall and a team serving percentage of 86.9%.

“Overall, this was a great game. To go to five sets with the school that got first in our league last year is an accomplishment by itself. We took that game as a lesson and will be back to beat them the second time around,” Jobanputra said.

The team will play Mission again on April 11 at Mission.