Boys' volleyball vanquishes Whitman

The Blair boys' varsity volleyball team (1-1) won a three set game against the Whitman Vikings (0-1) finishing with a score of 25-21, 25-15, 25-22. The Blazers started slow due to missed serves and lack of communication among players, but soon came back without dropping a set.

Blair knew this game was a must win, junior David Hsu stated: "I think if we can stay focused and stay in the game we can pull out a solid win. Whitman is a respectable school and we need to bring our A game."

In the first set, the Blazers did not start strong and found themselves behind 12-16. This was thanks to the fact that the Vikings had a line of tall blockers and posed a considerable threat to Blair's main hitters. However towards the end of the set, Blair gained some critical points through senior Dennis Yang and junior captain Eric Chen's strong serving and won the first set.

Blair performed much stronger in the second set with strong hitting from Ram Sreenivasan and Stephan Loh. The Vikings lost some momentum and began making careless mistakes. Behind Wang's strong and consistent serving Blair won a close set at 25-20.

The players faced a slow start to the third set and found themselves behind 9-14, falling to the Viking's consistent serving and blocks. However, they began to find their momentum and pulled ahead to 20-18 through Chen's serving. The game was very close late in the third set at 23-22 with Wang serving. At game point, Sreenivasan served and Yang finished the game with a strong hit.

Despite their mostly clean victory, coach Chris Liang felt that the boys had a lot to improve on before their next game. "The boys weren't playing to their level and played down to the other team," he said, "they need to work on their team chemistry more."