Mentor Cardinals Boys Volleyball Defeats NDCL 3-0 

Photo by Al Kornspan

Mentor –  The Mentor Cardinals Boys Volleyball team hosted the Notre-Dame Cathedral Latin boys Volleyball team on Wednesday night.  In a close match up, the Cardinals defeated the Lions, 3-0.

“I’m real proud of my boys tonight,” said Mentor Head Boys Volleyball coach John Catalano. “This was a game, we came in, we weren’t really sure what was going to happen. We played this team last week, we played them well, but you never know, it’s (were) a first year program.  They came out here and they had fire. They were ready to go, they were attacking the net which is something we worked on all week long.” He went on to say “Our back row was really communicating well and they didn’t give up.  We went down in that last set.  A lot of people thought we were going to four, but I knew we weren’t.  I knew those boys were going to push it all the way and we did exactly what we had to do to win, and I couldn’t be more happy for them.”

As coach Catalano alluded to, their games were close throughout.

In fact, Mentor won the first set 25-19, and the second set 25-20. The Cardinals then closed out the match 26-24 to get the victory.  

A major factor in the Cardinals victory over the Lions was senior Kyle Smith. Smith was a dominant force at the net.  

“We had a great game today,” said Smith. “The end there got kind of close, it was really exciting. That’s always the fun part of volleyball. You get that perfect spike right up in the middle, and just hit that thing straight down. Also, the tips were working today. That block at the end really saved us.”

The Cardinals move to 3-1 on the season and will next take on Euclid, March 31 in a conference matchup.