Krishany Marius also contributed to this article.
Malden High’s Boys Volleyball team ended their season well and plan to continue their good work while competing in states. They ended the season successfully with only one loss.
Coach Dan Jurkowski claimed that this season has been easy overall because the team knew what was at stake from the beginning and they have been ready for a while. Jurkowski wants to focus all of his energy on this team to see how far they can go.
After losing to O’Brien 3:2, Jurkowski believes that the team grew more. “We realized that maybe we weren’t as good as we thought we were so we needed to get better. And then today, we came back and played O’Brien again, we won three to one, so it was good.” Jurkowski said.
Jurkowski said that captains Kingston Chen and Yoji Yonetani hold everyone on the team accountable and make sure everyone shows up to practice on time and prepared. “They’re just a group that’s super motivated right now.”
Chen noted that “everyone puts a part into their team and steps up as a player. I feel like I don’t need to motivate my team to go to practice every day. I don’t need them to like performing, I don’t need them to do the basics. They do more than enough.”
Chen had fun during his last season with this team. “I felt like everyone exceeded our expectations.” He said. Chen has no regrets about this season.
Yonetani said, “I knew that this year we were going to have a really good team. So I was already excited about that.” To prepare for states, Yonetani said, “We’ll just keep playing as hard as we did today. Keep the intensity and just have fun, volleyball is all about having fun.”
Senior Jason Chenn said that this season was fun but also stressful. “I’ll miss it for sure but I’m trying to make the most of it right now.”
Cover photo from The Blue and Gold Archives, taken by Desiree Nong.
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