SAN BERNARDINO >> The Indian Springs High boys volleyball team won its seventh consecutive match, defeating Beaumont 25-15, 25-19, 25-22 on Tuesday.
The Coyotes were just too athletic for the Cougars in the nonleague match, not dazzling the fans, but also doing nothing to contradict their No. 5 ranking in CIF-Southern Section Division 5.
Asked if the match went the way he expected, Indian Springs star setter/outside hitter Joshua Cuen said: “Quite the opposite. We knew they were a good team and we needed to bring our ‘A’ game. It took us a little while to get into the match. and our passing was not that good, but we still got the win.”
The 5-foot-7 Cuen, also a soccer standout, had eight kills. Luis Hernandez, who also plays soccer — he was the goalkeeper most of his prep career — had 14 kills and Marvin Flores had nine.
Hernandez, who quit the volleyball team last season to concentrate on soccer but is all-in with volleyball now, also didn’t think the Coyotes played their best.
“I felt like we could have done better, but it’s another win,” he said. “We need to keep on going hard for when we get into CIF. We want to go farther than last year.”
Indian Springs (16-1 overall, 7-0 Mountain Valley League) was unbeaten last year in the San Andreas League but fell to Valley View 3-0 in the first round of the Division 5 playoffs.
Despite the less-than-glowing assessments of a few of his key players, Indian Springs coach John Arient was upbeat about the victory.
“We’re making good progress,” he said. “We’re playing at a higher level. Instead of just set-bump-spike we’re running plays and varying things.”
Beaumont (11-10 overall, 1-3 Mountain Pass League) did not excel on the 46th birthday of its first-year coach, D’Sunte Wilson.
“We could have played a lot better,” Wilson said. “We were sloppy and made too many hitting errors. We had 25 hitting errors and we usually only have about eight.”
Vincent Nguyen led the Cougars with 14 kills and springy Seth Barnhouse had 10 kills. Also for Beaumont, Israel Olvera contributed eight blocks and six kills, Isiah Cervantes chipped in with 25 digs and David Hinahon managed 12 assists.
The tone was set early as Indian Springs, leading the first set 21-15, scored the next four points to take a 1-0 lead in the match. A kill by Margarito Moedano and an ace by Hernandez highlighted that flurry.
Indian Springs’ Jorge Morales went down in the first set with an ankle sprain and spent the rest of the match sitting on a folding chair with his leg elevated and ice affixed to his leg. Arient said he would be out at least a week.
