Taft Turns It Into a Red-Letter Day

Players on the Taft High boys’ volleyball team had Chatsworth seeing red in Tuesday night’s City Section Championship semifinal match at Taft.

With several Toreadors playing with hair dyed bright crimson, Taft defeated Chatsworth, 15-9, 15-0, 12-15, 15-10, for the third time this season.

No. 2-seeded Taft (15-1) plays top-seeded Grant in the final on Friday night at Cal State Northridge.

“We definitely were looking forward to playing them again,” said Taft outside hitter Bryan Capper, who finished with 15 kills. “They were talking trash after we beat them the last time, and all that did was make us want to get them even more.”

Nick Armstrong had 21 kills and opposite hitter Inshik Shin, who didn’t play in Taft’s loss to Grant earlier this year, added 15 kills. Joel Rodstein finished with 13 kills and three aces for Taft.

“They got early leads on us in all four games. We were able to come back in the third game, but in the others, we couldn’t,” said junior Paul George. “We’ve been able to execute a lot of quicks and backside hits in our last few matches, but they did a good job defending them today.”

George led No. 3-seeded Chatsworth (13-3) with 26 kills and five blocks.

The second game lasted only 16 minutes as Chatsworth managed just five sideouts.

Doug Turner had 15 kills and Matt Cornell added 10 kills and two blocks for Chatsworth.

Capper served an ace on Taft’s second match point.