After tough playoff assignment, Gateway volleyball reflects on banner season

By: Michael Love
Sunday, May 25, 2025 | 11:01 AM

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When the Gateway boys volleyball team defeated Fox Chapel on May 8 to wrap up an 8-2 Section 4-3A slate and clinch the section championship outright, players, coaches, administrators and many others at the school were excited and expected to see the Gators presented with a first-round home game when the WPIAL playoff brackets were revealed the next day.

But Gateway was tabbed as the No. 9 seed and had to make the trip out to No. 8 Mt. Lebanon, another section champion, for a first-round matchup May 13. The Gators were the only section champion in either Class 3A or Class 2A to travel in the first round.

“If I tried to tell you that it didn’t have an effect on our confidence, I’d be lying,” Gateway coach Phil Randolph said. “I can parrot all the talking points about ‘embracing the role of the underdog,’ but these are smart kids who were raised by smart parents and guardians, so they saw the same thing that I was seeing.

“It was a tough pill to swallow, and it was difficult to find our footing when we abruptly and unexpectedly realized that we would have to turn on a dime. It was frustrating and disappointing to say the very least.”

While the Gators brought a fight to the Blue Devils, they were not able to advance. Mt. Lebanon scored a 3-1 win with set scores of 25-19, 16-25, 25-14 and 26-14.

“It was a ‘hold your head high” postmatch speech, and I truly meant those words,” Randolph said. “There were certainly nerves and emotions, both the visible and the repressed types, but our guys worked their tails off and played a heck of a match. Up until the closing point of the fourth set, these guys gave it everything they had.”

With the adversity of having to travel in the first place, the Gators were put behind the 8-ball with the Game 1 loss, but Randolph said he knew his players would not fold their tents, and they rebounded with a solid Game 2 victory.

“For me, I think that a big part of the night was making sure that we are the ones who were putting our opponent into situations where they are creating unforced errors,” he said. “As noted, there were a lot of nerves heading into the first set, and once we got that out of our system a bit and were able to dictate the pace, we looked like the team that I had come to know and love.

“In that second set, we did what we had to do to put Lebo in a position to adjust to us. We were careful yet calculated in our serving, we had high points of contact on our swings, and we were able to take advantage of a height differential that emerged after they stacked all of their bigger guys into three side-by-side spots on the court. It’s a fickle game though, and momentum swings easily.”

Gateway capped its season at 10-4 overall and will be able to put a ‘2025’ on the section-championship banner.

“Despite the abrupt end, we had a great season, particularly considering the move up to Triple-A,” Randolph said. “Prior to our last section championship in 2022, there was something along the lines of a 36-year gap on that banner. The gap is now three years, and we’ll look to trim that time down even further from here as we turn our eyes to the 2026 season.”

Gateway will enter the 2026 season without this year’s senior group that included four-year team members Owen Echegaray, Darious Farrar, Ethan Nguyen and Tom Nikou.

“Given the manner in which this loss marked the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another, it was also really easy to take pride in seeing how Owen, Darious, Ethan and Tom had grown so much as athletes, leaders and young men,” Randolph said.

“On and off the court, I’ll miss them tremendously, as will their teammates. The boys who are graduating, however, are ones who have taken pride in helping build this program into what it is today.”

Randolph said it was equally satisfying to see how the underclassmen who constituted the rest of the starting lineup — middles Chase Lewandowski and Donovan Shaffer, outside hitter Dan Bozicevic, oppositional side hitter Aiden Coughran and middle hitter/outside hitter Toktobek Kubanychbekov — have taken big steps this season.

“They can have organic, earned ownership of calling this ‘their team’ from here on out,” he said. “This is a great bunch of young men, and it is easy to root for them.”

Gateway was well-represented on the Section 4 all-star team with Bozicevic, Echegaray, Farrar and Nikou voted to the first team. Coughran and Kubanychbekov are second-team selections.

“Volleyball is the ultimate team sport, and it was a team-oriented approach that led us here,” Randolph said. “We have a competitive group of guys, and I encourage them to challenge one another every day in practice to really earn it and call it their own. That challenging attitude extended into attendance at open gyms in the offseason. I think that it’s healthy to be accountable to your brothers on the court in that manner, and I loved to see that these guys felt the same way.

“More than anything, it was a lot of ‘invisible hours’ that went into the program. While the season runs from March to May, we are unofficially a year-round program, and our summer open gyms will begin in about two weeks from now. Nothing worth anything is ever earned easily, so we’ll continue to come together as one and come together often so that when March 2026 rolls around, we’ll be more than ready to roll.”

Michael Love is a TribLive reporter covering sports in the Alle-Kiski Valley and the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. A Clearfield native and a graduate of Westminster (Pa.), he joined the Trib in 2002 after spending five years at the Clearfield Progress. He can be reached at mlove@triblive.com.

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