Burroughs Boys Volleyball Beats Burbank in Pacific League Match

Burroughs High School’s boys volleyball team dropped the opening set Friday night but never flinched, rattling off three straight to defeat host Burbank 27-29, 25-18, 25-13, 25-22 in a Pacific League match that stayed competitive longer than the final numbers suggest.

The Bears, now 13-5 overall and a perfect 4-0 in league play, handed Burbank its fourth consecutive league loss. The Bulldogs fall to 2-8 on the season and remain winless in Pacific League play at 0-4.

The first set was the story of the night, at least for a while. The two rivals traded points through a half-dozen ties late in the game before Burbank junior Brandon Chong converted a set-winning push to put the Bulldogs up one. The set was knotted at 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, and 27 before Chong’s finish ended it, a sequence that had the crowd at Burbank High tracking every serve. Senior Caiden Kai Abarabar had a tapper to tie it at 24-24, and senior Jun Angel’s service miscue extended things to 25-25. Burroughs’ Noah Duffield, who would go on to be one of the most consequential players of the evening, contributed a kill to tie it at 23-23 before the set ultimately went the other way.

That first set was about all the Bulldogs could hold onto.

Burroughs took control of the second set early and never gave Burbank a path back in. A service winner from Devon Romo put the Bears up 9-5, and Duffield’s bullet stretched the lead to 11-5. Kills from Skyy Alston and a push from Duffield pushed Burroughs to 18-11, and Alston added a block to extend the advantage further. The third set was more of the same, with Burroughs running away at 25-13.

The fourth set offered Burbank something worth building on heading into the rest of the season. The Bulldogs led 17-16 after a service winner from senior Noah Lam and stayed within striking distance through much of the game. Senior Farkhat Taishev’s block put Burbank up 21-20, but Burroughs answered with a 23-21 run capped by a kill from Gavin Etterbeek. Duffield’s ace made it 24-21, and a spike from Marco Santiago-Dorn finished the set and the match.

Burbank head coach Brandon Villaflor credited his team’s effort while pointing to the unforced errors that let Burroughs build momentum in the middle sets.

“I thought we did a great job of challenging them offensively. We started the game off with great energy, and put pressure on them with tough serves,” Villaflor said. “I thought going into the second and third, we just had a couple of unforced errors, and got flustered off some of their runs.”

He found a silver lining in how his team handled the fourth set.

“I’m very proud of how we responded in the fourth set, and how collectively we were involved as a team in the stretch,” Villaflor added.

For Burroughs, Duffield stood out in a lineup full of productive contributors. Santiago-Dorn, Alston, Etterbeek, and Romo all made meaningful plays across the four sets. The Bears look like the team to beat in the Pacific League right now, and Friday’s road win over a rival only reinforces that.

For Burbank, the record is hard to ignore at 2-8, but Friday showed flashes of what the program can do when it’s playing with energy. The Bulldogs won a tight first set against a team that has won four straight league matches. That kind of competitiveness matters for a young roster still working to find its footing in league play.

Burbank will need to translate those fourth-set moments and that opening-set grit into something more consistent as Pacific League play continues into spring.