Rams ready to take next step

When Rancho senior Antonio Boucher entered high school, he didn’t know he wanted to be a volleyball player.

Neither did most of the other nine seniors on the Rams’ boys volleyball team.

“They came in as basketball players and left as volleyball players. And I think when they entered the court their freshman year, they never would have guessed that,” Rancho coach Allegra Derzon said. “But that’s what happens when you’re able to develop and become really good — you’ll develop a passion for it.”

In Derzon’s first year with the varsity team, Rancho finished 11-6 with a loss to Coronado in the first round of the Sunrise Region playoffs. That was an improvement from 2007, when the Rams failed to qualify for the postseason.

Each year since, Rancho steadily improved, to 9-3 in league play last year and 11-2 in the Northeast this season.

“I tell them every time they walk into the gym to leave a better player,” the fourth-year coach said. “If they keep doing that, when they walk into the playoffs, if they play the best that they can play, they can do it and they can take (a playoff game).”

Boucher, who leads the Rams with 278 kills and a .362 hitting percentage, played middle blocker before moving to outside hitter by his junior year.

“My first time in the gym, I couldn’t hit. I was just a blocker,” said Boucher, who also has 35 blocks and 201 digs this season. “The first couple of days, I could pass and I could block. But I couldn’t hit at all. It was horrible.”

One of the more dynamic hitters in Southern Nevada, Boucher now can do more than nudge the ball over the net.

“When we played club, on a game point, our setter (Silverado’s) Casey Hadland set me a bick (a backward pass) and I banged it to the 10-foot line from the back row,” he said. “That was one of my best moments.”

Those days at the front court have helped the rest of his game, Boucher said.

“It makes it easier when I have to block,” he added. “When the ball’s near you, it’s yours.”

Rancho (13-4) has forced itself into Southern Nevada’s top flight of volleyball, in large part because of the chemistry between the coaches and players.

“This is the first team we’ve had (that) has had Coach Derzon the whole time,” said Kevin Plascencia, a precise outside hitter who has 35 aces as a senior. “She’s been our only coach, and she’s a really great coach.”

Consistency is a key ingredient in this year’s team, whether it’s from the teammates’ days at Hyde Park Middle School or playing basketball together for the past three years.

“Since seventh grade, we’ve all been in this group,” Plascencia said. “It helps with the chemistry on court. We can be closer and say things that you wouldn’t say if you weren’t so close.”

The Rams hope they can translate their regular-season success into the postseason.

“We make sure to play every game like a playoff game,” said Plascencia, who has a .321 hitting percentage with 178 kills. “We don’t take games off.”

Plascencia, a licensed pilot who has committed to the Air Force Academy, plans to continue his volleyball career with the Falcons, and Boucher will play at Santa Barbara City College and hopes to eventually play at Pepperdine.

The hitting duo share a tight bond, even though they play on opposite sides of the court.

“I trust him wholeheartedly,” Boucher said. “On game point, even if I were on a roll, I’d say to set it to Kevin, because he can get it down. He is the one person I’ve played with — and I’ve played with Shadow Ridge, Centennial, Silverado and Vegas kids — but he’s the one who I trust completely.”

Junior libero Kyle Stankosky is the only nonsenior on the varsity team, and the Rams hope to cap 2010 by breaking a decade-long winless streak in the playoffs.

“A breakthrough is what we want, absolutely,” Derzon said. “But no one hands it to you. You’ve got to take it.”