Vista volleyball is off to 2-2 start

This volleyball season figures to be much different than last year for Vista del Lago's varsity boys' volleyball team. A year ago, the Eagles had nine seniors and the team went 9-1 in the Capital Athletic League and earned a piece of the league championship with El Camino. From there Eagles reached the Division II section championship game where they lost in three straight games to Ponderosa. Their season officially ended a few days later with a loss in the first round of the Nor-Cal Regional playoffs. This year, the Eagles have only two seniors on its roster of 15 players. They have senior juniors, four sophomores and a pair of freshmen. The one key piece the Eagles do have is senior outside hitter Jesse Lashchuk, who Vista coach James Fanshier considers to be one of the top outside hitters in the Sacramento area. When the Eagles need a point, there's no question who the team will turn to, but Lashchuk will need some help. In the middle, junior Rohan Garg will be there with sophomore Nikhil Pandia Raju seeing the floor as well. Pandia Raju is new to the game, but Fanshier said if he can teach him an approach he could turn out to be a key hitter on the team because of his height and leaping ability. Sophomore Joshua Chitrapu joins Lashchuk on the outside and will be asked to help create some offense. Right sides/opposites who will likely see the most playing time will be sophomores Jaden Song, and Matthew Francesconi and junior Russell Kwok. In charge to get the ball to these hitters will be setters Sai Sreedhar, a junior, freshman Bradon Karnes and another junior Aayush Sangani. Vista opened the season March 2 with a three-game loss to Whitney, but since have won a pair of Capital Athletic League matches, defeating Capital Christian in three games March 3 before a 3-1 win over El Camino on Wednesday. The slow-starting Eagles fell behind 9-2 in the first set, but rebounded to cut the deficit to one, 14-13. El Camino, however, went on an 11-5 run win the game, 25-18. Vista rebounded, however, to win the next three games in a row, all by the same score of 25-20. "We've got a lot of growth potential," Fanshier said. "I would like to see this team continue to progress through the rough times that we're bound to have this season. If we do that, we could finish in the top-three in league." Friday in a non-league match against Del Oro, the Eagles started slowly but got more competitive as the match went on, but still lost in three straight games, 25-9, 25-21 and 27-25.