Men’s volleyball records first win of season

Palomar men’s volleyball has had a slow start to the season, but a win on Wednesday, March 2 might give them the momentum they need to revamp their season.

The Comets won all three sets of their conference opener against the Miramar Jets. Palomar won the first set 25-20, second set 25-15, and the third set 25-12 to give the Comets their first victory of the season.

The Comets finished last season 8-9, going 6-8 in the Pacific Coast Athletic Conference.

Palomar men’s volleyball had several freshman contributors going into Wednesday’s matchup.

One of those contributors was outside hitter Tyler Hedley (University City High) who led Palomar with nine kills and seven digs.

Freshman middle blocker Ahmed Khalil (San Marcos High), contributed a block to put up the final point Palomar needed to put away the Jets in the second set. Khalil also had seven total attacks through the entire match on Wednesday.

Palomar freshman outside hitter, Tyler Baker (San Marcos High) contributed three aces for the Comets.

Chandler Matteson (Carlsbad High) had a big game, opening up the third set serving six straight points. Matteson is also averaging 3.5 points per set overall which ranks him 10th this season, as well as 3 kills per set which put him 9th overall.

After the game, Matteson said, “It’s very important. We’re not a team that runs long distance, and we have to have really good agility, so we need to be in really good shape,” when asked if cardio plays an important factor.

“We’re a group of guys that aren’t super tall, super athletic, but we play well together and we strive off each other’s energy, so that really gets us going,” Matteson said.

Comets head coach, Bjorn Dahl, seemed happy with what his team had accomplished against Miramar.

Coach Dahl stressed that the most important thing he focuses on during the game is, “Just controlling the ball. We pass pretty well. We dig a lot of balls. So in most of the matches, that keeps us in the rally longer.”

When Coach Dahl was asked how the opposition was, he said, “I thought we played pretty well. So I don’t know, I think they might be a little weaker, that team, but I thought we were really steady the whole match, what I mean by that is if they were messing up or anything like that, we didn’t let that bother us.”

“We have a pretty good group that has a lot of experience playing in either high school or the club, and a lot of beach players. They’ve been playing for a while.” said Dahl.

“Understanding you need to work and control the ball in order to win,” he added. “So that’s been keeping us going. That was our first win this season. We played some pretty good teams earlier, but we’ve still been working really hard.”

The Comets next home match is Wednesday, March 23 at 6 p.m. vs San Diego City College.