University of California, Merced – Steele, Morikawa Highlight Bobcats All-Cal Pac Honors

MERCED, Calif. – Ryan Steele has been named the California Pacific Conference Setter of the Year and Chris Morikawa has been named the Cal Pac Attacker of the Year, as announced by the league office on Friday afternoon. Both players also earned unanimous All-Cal Pac First Team honors. Libero Zach Brill is a honorable mention.

The Bobcats are one of just two Cal Pac teams with multiple major award winners and unanimous first team selections. 

Steele, now a 3X Cal Pac Setter of the Year, and Morikawa are appearing on the All-Cal Pac First Team for the third consecutive season. Brill is a postseason honoree for the second straight year.

Steele is just the second student athlete in school history to earn a *of the year award* three times, joining 3X Defensive Player of the Year Mia Belvin from the women’s basketball program.

This year was Steele’s best and he became the first player in the country since men’s volleyball became a championship sport to average over ten assists, 1.6 digs and 0.9 kills per set. His career-high 10.1 assists per set led the Cal Pac and he also led all setters with 107 total digs and 59 kills. He was also tied for first with 30 blocks. Among all Cal Pac players, he ranks third with 0.34 service aces per set and tallied a career-best 22 on the year. Steele registered multiple monster performances over the 18-match regular season, including two recent double-double’s against postseason qualifiers. He went for a program-record 61 assists and 12 digs against Westcliff, while recording 59 assists and ten digs in a postseason clinching win on Senior Day against Simpson. He also had five kills in each match.

Morikawa leads the Cal Pac for the third straight year with 3.9 kills per set and is the only player ranked top ten in kills P/S, digs P/S, service aces P/S, and hitting percentage. He is seventh and leads all non-liberos with a career-high 1.89 digs per set, while ranking eighth with 0.26 aces per set. He is fourth in the league with a .277 hitting percentage and is the only player to hit over .200 with a minimum of 400 attempts. Morikawa also notched 23 blocks on the year, including seven solo. Morikawa opened the year with double figure kills in ten straight matches and hit double figures in 14 of his 16 matches overall. He smacked at least 20 kills against three different opponents, including a career-high 25 in just four sets against Park University Gilbert. Morikawa ended the year with three…