Matt Reinking sets the ball for David Parker to spike it against Placer on March 10. Photo by Robert Parker.

Starting the season off with two losses hasn’t deterred the boys’ varsity volleyball team as they have battled back to a 5-3 record, including a win against Placer in their first league game on March 10.

The Wildcats swept the Hillmen in three straight games in the best-of-five series with scores of 25-12, 25-14 and 25-18.

Richard Litvinchuk, who scored six points in the game, was pleased with the result.

“It’s a good start (to the season), a strong start. We kept them under 20 points so that’s good,” Litvinchuk said.

But David Parker, the team’s highest scorer by contributing nine points, didn’t think his team performed like they should have.

“We didn’t play to the best of our ability… We didn’t communicate as much and we came in thinking that this was going to be an easy game instead of thinking that every game should be a hard game. But next game, we should be better. Every game we should be better,” Parker said.

He’s confident in the team, though. This year, the Wildcats play every league team three times, and both he and head coach Kirsten Parker hope this winning tradition will continue.

“It’s awesome that we started off with a win and having some confidence going into the rest of league. It’ll be nice to have some momentum going through because it’ll be a long league season,” Coach Parker said.

Parker moved the lineup around in this game and changed the positions of some of her players in order to get them out of their comfort zones.

“I put several players in positions they haven’t played all season so far. It was good; they worked on communication. That’s one of the things that we’re lacking, so it really forced them to have to talk on the court. It gives everyone on our team an opportunity to be on the court and perhaps they can earn some more playing time down the road,” she said.

Parker is confident that this win will help establish a playoff-bound run for this team.

“The top three teams in our league go into playoffs, then from playoffs to regionals, regionals to state, and it all starts off with really good momentum. This is a really good team; we should go really far,” David Parker said.

Their next league home game is March 17 against El Camino.

By ROBERT PARKER

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 1:28 p.m. March 11, 2011 to reflect a schedule change.