Trevor-time for T.O.
Van Uden leads attack as Thousand Oaks boys' volleyball team dispatches Westlake in three games
By Stephen Dorman sdorman@theacorn.com

JANN HENDRY/Acorn Newspapers EMOTIONAL LEADER- Thousand Oaks senior outside hitter Trevor Van Uden crushes a serve during Tuesday's victory at Westlake.

The chase for the Marmonte League boys' volleyball championship just got a whole lot tighter.

With a dominating three-game victory on the road over Westlake High Tuesday night, Thousand Oaks is now tied atop the league standings with the Warriors.

Both teams are 8-1 in the Marmonte, with each squad winning on the other's home court this season. TOHS improved to 11-1 overall with the win, while Westlake fell to 13-2.

Thousand Oaks senior outside hitter Trevor Van Uden led the way for the Lancers.

From the opening whistle, Van Uden was the emotional and physical force behind his team's offensive attack as Thousand Oaks won by scores of 2520, 2519 and 25-21.

"He's developed so much as a player over the years," TOHS head coach Yariv Lerner said of Van Uden. "Physically he's come along, and he's a great leader on the team. He really fires the guys up and they respect him. They follow him.

JANN HENDRY/Acorn Newspapers DIG IT- Lancer Michael Deamer had 38 assists vs. Westlake.

"If Trevor's going to go somewhere, they are going to follow him."

Van Uden finished with 14 kills. He said the Lancers had plenty of motivation to try and beat the defending league champion Warriors.

"We didn't want to let them go undefeated again," Van Uden said.

"The win is huge. We've been working real hard and everyone has been contributing," he said. "We want to take league; it's an important goal."

Thousand Oaks set the tone early in the initial game by opening up a 9-1 lead. Westlake climbed back to within 22-18 late, but a winning kill by T.O.'s Michael Taxter put the Lancers up one-game-to-none.

Westlake head coach Doug Magorien, whose team entered the contest without having lost a match since being defeated by Oak Park in the Dos Pueblos Tournament on March 14, said the Warriors failed to match Thousand Oaks' intensity.

"You could tell they wanted it more than us," Magorien said. "If you get the sense of complacency and think you're invulnerable to anything, you can lose.

"This was our first loss in league in a year and a half. We were undefeated last year, and we won all of our games this year," he said. "And now we're playing a good team. They knew what the stakes were. They were hungrier than we were. We didn't come with our 'A' game and they did."

Games 2 and 3 were much closer than the first.

In the second game, Westlake took its first lead of the match at 9-8. The joy was short-lived, however, as TOHS outscored the Warriors 17-10 from that point forward to clinch Game 2 on a block by Cyrus Kiani.

The third game was decided on a kill by Chad Kingi. Thousand Oaks came back from a 15-10 deficit to clinch the match.

"It was a team thing tonight," Lerner said. "Chad, with those overpasses at the end- they were huge. Michael Taxter is just a raw athlete. He's learning the game but at an incredible speed. It's fun to watch him. He's going to be so good down the road."

Jordan Craig had 10 kills for Westlake. Magorien said his team would use the defeat as motivation to improve.

"You can always take something positive out of losing," Magorien said. "Some coaches say 'no, you can't,' but you can see what you need to work on, and there's that motivation to improve.

"If we would've won, the chances that they could've caught us would have been smaller. But now it's pretty close. For us to be league or co-league champs, we've got to win out. Hopefully that'll add motivation to the rest of our games, and we'll get hungrier."