Rocklin High volleyball team makes donation to Maui wildfire victims during trip to Hawaii
Dave Muscarella and his Rocklin High School girls volleyball team made sure to soak in the beauty of the Hawaiian islands.
After a pedestrian 4-5 showing in nine matches over the three-day Labor Day Classic volleyball tournament in Hilo, Hawaii, the longtime Thunder head coach let his girls unwind on the final day of their trip.
Some found a spot perfect for swimming with local sea turtles. Some of the braver players were up for cliff jumping, plunging from high above into the Pacific Ocean. But on their way back to the mainland, the Rocklin volleyball players were reminded of a bigger purpose for their trip during a layover in Maui, the island ravaged by wildfires.
At least 115 people have died with thousands more displaced due to the fires that blazed across Lahaina, located along the western shores of Maui. The death toll surpassed that of the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, a town just over 80 miles north of Rocklin.
According to local news outlets, roughly 3,000 students comprising the four main public schools in Lahaina have been displaced. As the Hawaii trip approached for Muscarella and his team, the Thunder decided to take action.
“We got together as a team and said, ‘We need to do something,’” Muscarella told the Sacramento Bee. “We, as coaches, it’s in our nature to try to get kids to see viewpoints other than their own. Over the years, we’ve done some things like this, but this was an opportunity that was really hard to pass up. Everyone was 100% on board and excited to be part of that. It was a no-brainer.”
The Rocklin program decided to raise funds for those in need in Maui. The team promoted its objective on social media, and once word reached local news stations, donations came pouring in. In less than a week, the Thunder volleyball team raised nearly $7,800 in Visa gift cards for displaced students in Lahaina.
“We were all really surprised to make that much money,” Muscarella said. “We were thinking two or three thousand, maybe hoping for five (thousand), and it turned out we were able to push it to almost eight (thousand). It was pretty nice.”
The Rocklin team met up with the Lahainaluna High School athletic director, coaches and students during its layover in Maui to donate the gift cards before returning to Sacramento.
“It was really surreal,” Rocklin senior Maddie Papia said. “The fact that we raised that much money in that short of time was crazy to me. And to actually be handing it to them, you could tell that they were so grateful and it really made us all feel great.”
‘Muscy’ retiring?
Muscarella is a volleyball lifer. He began coaching women’s volleyball as an assistant at Butte College in 1989 and landed his first head coaching job at Hartnell College in Salinas in 1993. After a run of success at the junior college level, Muscarella moved to Rocklin in 1999 and has been the Thunder varsity coach ever since.
“When you think of Rocklin volleyball, you think of coach Muscarella,” Rocklin sophomore Addy Scheitlin said. “Since I was little, playing for Rocklin’s volleyball club, he’d always be at practice, and I’d be like, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s the varsity volleyball coach.’”
Known affectionately as “Muscy” to his players, Muscarella’s Rocklin run includes eight Sierra Foothill League titles, three Sac-Joaquin Section championships and nearly 600 career victories. He stood at 596 wins entering Thursday’s SFL showdown with Oak Ridge.
“He always made sure that I felt very welcomed,” Papia said. “I feel like I’ve learned so much leadership skills from him. I’m really glad that he taught me that and I’m gonna use it for the rest of my life.”
Muscarella said this season will “probably” be his last as a coach and physical education teacher at Rocklin. But with a young group of developing players — Rocklin starts five sophomores and has just one senior on the roster — he says it won’t be easy to hang up his whistle.
“I’m having a lot of fun this year, so it’ll be hard to walk away,” Muscarella said.
Team leaders
Sophomore Gianna Bogan, one of eight sophomores on varsity, racked up 247 kills as a freshman last season and has 122 kills in 35 sets this year. Fellow sophomores Scheitlin (team-high 146 kills) and Rylee Heinz (team-best .473 kill percentage) share the hitting duties. No team in the section has two players in the top 20 in assists except for Rocklin and its sophomore setter tandem of Devon Schweitzer and Ava Pabalate.
Papia, the lone Thunder senior, is a returning All-Sierra Foothill League libero who nearly set the school’s single season record for digs last season with 329.
“I’m hoping to see them develop and mature,” Muscarella said. “They’re very talented. I still think we’re not quite there in our mental approach and our composure. But that comes with maturity, and when we get those things, this team has a chance to be as good as any team I’ve ever had here.”
The SFL is dominant among other leagues in most sports, and volleyball is no different. Five of the six SFL teams reside in the most recent version of “The List,” the California Interscholastic Federation’s rankings for its top volleyball teams. Rocklin currently ranks 18th in the North Region’s Top 25.
“I would hope that people look at Rocklin and say we were a competitive team for a lot of years,” Muscarella said. “I would hope that we’ve also been a team people want to play because we’re good people, too.”
