It would be hard to find two more disparate programs meeting in the quarterfinals this year—a Newport Harbor team that may as well wait to hold senior night until the quarters they’re there so regularly, and a Poly team that hasn’t been there since the reformatting of the CIF Division 1 bracket.  A team of girls who grew up playing in clubs in the Sailors, and as Poly coach Leland McGrath says of his squad, a team of girls who grew up playing volleyball in the park because it was what they liked to do.

That’s not to say that the dissimilarity of the teams and their stories has bred infamiliarity—Poly is still a CIF top ten team, so they’re not exactly coming out of left field even if it is just recently they’ve been cashing in their “potential” chips.  And McGrath (an Orange County native) says Dan Glenn’s program has been a big part of how he’s constructed his burgeoning talent factory at Poly.  “I even use his jumping coach,” McGrath admitted after Poly’s round two win over Harvard-Westlake.

This will be one of the first times Poly has played a team with as much firepower potential as they have themselves, and their ability to play consistent defense should be a deciding factor in the match—with the weapons Poly has and an expert setter like Hawaii-bound Rainette Uiato, the Rabbits will get theirs on offense.

Namely, Litara Keil has to continue to play shutdown on the outside, where she’ll be contending with one of the best hitters in the southland in Kirby Burnham, the 6-1 senior.  When these two teams played (in their first match of the season, a five-set Newport win), Burnham had 19 kills.  In the middle, Sa Iosia will have a world-class foe to contend with, as Newport’s Katey Thompson (their second leading attacker) will be a handful.

If the Rabbits can keep up their explosive offensive play, and dampen, if not shut off, their opponent’s firepower in return, they’ve got a very good chance at pulling off a huge upset, and earning a berth into the semifinals.