Hoover Gets Notre Dame in a Vacuum

GLENDALE —  In the afternoon, they went to the movie “Twister.”

In the evening, they created one of their own.

Members of the Hoover High boys’ volleyball team blew through Notre Dame, 15-11, 15-9, 15-9, in first-round action of the Southern Section Division I playoffs Friday night at Hoover.

The Tornadoes were taller, faster and served better.

And they won a playoff match for the first time despite a so-so performance by their prime performer, 6-foot-7 Nick Marbach.

Marbach had 14 kills and eight errors, but Andy Russell covered with 17 kills.

“I’m not the only player on this team,” said Marbach, a junior who is already drawing the interest of college recruiters.

“We have three or four guys, so one could be down and it doesn’t matter.”

Hoover (13-3) faces San Marcos in the second round Tuesday at a site to be determined.

Notre Dame (8-9), which entered the playoffs with the help of a tie-breaking coin flip, exited despite Bro Richmond’s 20 kills and 12 more from Doug Noonan.

At 6-3, Richmond was the tallest starter for Notre Dame, while Hoover has three starters who are 6-4 or taller.

“We don’t face too many guys that tall,” said Richmond, who had 10 kills in a first game that could have gone either way.

The difference was the defense. Hoover had six blocks while Notre Dame only one.

Hoover finished with 15 blocks and Notre Dame had just two.

Notre Dame also hurt itself with some poor serving.

The Knights had 16 service errors, including seven in the second game as Hoover ran out to 6-1 and 12-5 leads.

“It was ridiculous,” Knight Coach Shaney Fink said. “Not much you can say about that.”

On the other side of the court, the Tornadoes served with precision.

“We served so well, we took [Richmond] out of the offense in the last game,” said 10th-year Hoover Coach Judy Thomsen, whose Tornadoes fully rebounded from 1995, when they were winless in the Pacific League.

This year, they won the Pacific League for the first time ever.

But they had to regroup to win a playoff match.

In an effort to recover from a busy week off the court because of advanced placement examinations, the Tornadoes took in a movie after school on Friday.

Said Marbach: “It was a cohesive thing.”

It worked.