Boys’ volleyball: Honeycutt powers Sylmar into City Section finals
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As much as Tyler Honeycutt is looking forward to starting his college basketball career at UCLA, he’s not done playing volleyball. There’s still a City Section championship to win and the 6-foot-9 senior outside hitter has Sylmar one match away from reaching that goal.
Honeycutt seemingly willed the Spartans to a 25-23, 25-23, 25-18 semifinal sweep over Taft on Tuesday night, ending all three games with crosscourt spikes.
‘This is my last chance,’ said Honeycutt, who had a match-high 21 kills and added three blocks. ‘The last three years we’ve lost in the playoffs and I don’t want that to happen to us again.’
With the top-seeded Spartans clinging to a 24-23 lead in Game 1, Honeycutt terminated a long rally with an uncontested kill. Sylmar led by the same score in Game 2 when its go-to guy hit through a block to give the Spartans a commanding lead.
‘We’re going to have to bring our ‘A’ game in the finals, no doubt about that,’ Honeycutt said. ‘And if we do, we can win it.’
The fourth-seeded Toreadors took a 5-0 lead in the third game before Sylmar reeled off six straight points to seize momentum. Setter Felipe Garcia finished with 31 assists, six kills and six blocks for the Spartans, who have not surrendered a game in the playoffs.
‘We didn’t make plays, it’s that simple,’ Taft Coach Arman Mercado said. ‘We could’ve just as easily been up two games instead of down two games. When they start tipping, that’s when we needed to get easy points and we didn’t take advantage of that enough.’
Sylmar advanced to Saturday’s final against Granada Hills at Roybal Learning Center in Los Angeles. The second-seeded Highlanders outlasted West Valley League rival El Camino Real, 25-19, 21-25, 25-11, 25-23, in Tuesday’s other semifinal.
-- Steve Galluzzo