The past four years, Santa Cruz High senior outside hitter Julien Pally has been a force on the volleyball court.

Heralded as one of the community’s great players, he helped the Cardinals win four straight Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League regular-season titles, and led his team to Central Coast Section title matches in Division II as a freshman, and in the prestigious Open Division as a junior.

He was voted by league coaches to the all-SCCAL first team the past three years, but, this year, he was honored with an award that seemed long overdue: league MVP.

“It’s really a team sport, so people around me are making me better,” said Pally, a member of Team USA’s National Team Development Program rosters for both indoor and beach. “I am a big voice on the team, so, with the award, I think it helped me command the group a little more during the last few games of the season, even though we didn’t do too well.”

Pally described his style of play as quiet and steady. He likes to remain even-keel. That said, he knew his teammates played up when the energy was high. He said he from midseason on that tried to be more animated and vocal after big plays, knowing it could benefit the team.

He said he was proud of the way he helped mentor some of the younger Cardinals. He tried to give them as much positive feedback as he could while taking on more responsibility so they could ease into their roles and gain confidence.

Pally missed much of his sophomore season while he recovered from meniscus surgery, but opponents may have forgotten given his impressive jumping height and ability to throttle the ball with ferocious power.He averaged a whopping eight kills per set.

Cardinals coach Peter Edwards praised Pally’s consistency and leadership skills.

“I think he’s very controlled and very physical,” Edwards said. “He’s able to get to a high contact point and still have full control of his body. And full control of his strength as well, so he’s able to put balls away without a whole lot of momentum, or a whole lot of downhill run that a lot of players will need. He can kinda lumber at it, elevate above, and hit high and hard. And that works for him on the block, as well. He’s very controlled with his hands. He knows when to press, when to pull, things like that. So he definitely turns a ton of points. We try to get him touching the ball actively as much as we can.”

Pally said his biggest focus this season was team-oriented.

“Peter helped me through a lot of leadership stuff to prepare for the season,” Pally said. “We were trying to mesh. Again, the skill gap, even among the starters, was a pretty big skill gap. We were trying to get the less experienced players to get better because that’s how we were going to get better. Peter told me on Day 1, ‘Hey, we can do a whole season focusing on you and you’ll get one percent, maybe two percent, better. But our team is going to get zero percent better from that. If we get these last few guys, they have obvious potential, if they get four percent better, our team gets 10 percent better.’ Drastically. And I was like, ‘Yeah, that sounds good to me.’ “

Pally had been accepted to UC Santa Cruz and is on the wait list for UC Santa Barbara.

“You never know with wait lists, so it looks like I’ll be staying in town, most likely,” he said, noting that if he attends UCSC, he plans to play on the Banana Slugs’ indoor team.

Scotts Valley senior outside hitter Raith Wallwork was given the league’s inaugural Mark Brewer Award, named after the late longtime volleyball official, coach and player.

Harbor’s Kendall Ronzano was named Coach of the Year by her peers.

Santa Cruz (30-5, 12-0) finished ranked No. 3 in the CCS, despite being upset by Los Gatos in the Open Division quarterfinals.

As dominant as the Cardinals were in league play, they faced some stiff challenges, mainly from crosstown foe Harbor.

The runner-up Pirates (30-6, 10-2) upset Santa Cruz for the SCCAL Tournament title, beat Monta Vista of Cupertino in the CCS D-IV championship to claim the program’s first section crown, and qualified for the CIF D-II NorCal Regional playoffs.

Santa Cruz finished with two players named to the all-league first team: Senior outside hitter Gammon Nielssen, a two-time first teamer and the 2024 SCCAL MVP, and senior middle Leo Sapunor, a repeat first-team honoree.

“Me, Gammon and Leo are the three seniors who kinda went through it all,” said Pally, of the four league titles. “At first we were getting shown how to do stuff by the older guys, but we got along really well with those older guys, so we learned pretty quickly. From there, we were teaching the other kids how to do it, because we looked so great to them. They come up from middle school and go, ‘Wow, these guys already won it.’ “

Harbor had four players named to the first team. Senior libero Abe Schmidt and and senior outside Noah Luksich made the first team for a second time, and were joined by junior right side Cooper Lastition and sophomore setter Eddie Weaver.

Soquel senior outside hitter Nathan McCarthy rounded out the first team.

Special honors

MVP: Julien Pally (Santa Cruz), Sr., OH

Mark Brewer Award: Raith Wallwork (Scotts Valley), Sr., OH

Coach of the Year: Kendall Ronzano (Harbor)

More online: To view the complete all-SCCAL boys volleyball team, click on this article at santacruzsentinel.com/sports