Men's Volleyball playoffs hope dies

The Golden West men's volleyball team's season ended in the same disappointing fashion that most of the season consisted of. Despite assurances early in the season from coaches and players alike that the team had enough talent to win the state championships, the Rustlers were unable to make the Southern California regional playoffs.

Entering the final week of the regular season, GWC's conference record was 5-5 and they were one game behind the 6-4 Irvine Valley College Lasers. The Rustlers needed to catch up to the Lasers to secure the third place spot in the Pacific Coast Athletic Conference and earn a spot in the playoffs.

With two games remaining, Golden West was faced with games against the 10-1 Orange Coast College and 3-7 San Diego City College that the team essentially had to beat. Unfortunately for the Rustlers, things did not go as planned as they lost 3-1 to OCC on April 13 and followed the loss with a 3-0 loss to SDCC on April 15.

As the Rustlers stumbled to finish their season, IVC cruised to the playoffs with victories over Palomar and Grossmont. With that, the Golden West season was over as they finished with a 5-7 record that left them in fourth place with the top three teams advancing.

Irvine Valley College went on to beat Santa Barbara City College, OCC and Grossmont in the playoffs and win the California Community College state championship.

Despite a disappointing season for the Rustlers, there were a few standouts in the final conference statistics. Reid Pangelinana finished in a tie for the third highest blocks per game ratio at 1.16, while Jordon Dyer finished fourth in the conference in digs for the season with 131 through 53 games played.

The disappointing conclusion to the season marked the twelfth consecutive season that the Rustlers finished without a state or conference championship.