Sports
Matt Fisher is The Star’s Boys Volleyball Player of the Year for 2025
Matt Fisher is no stranger to high school sporting success. A year ago, he celebrated with his Camarillo High teammates after winning a CIF-Southern Section Division 4 baseball championship. Fisher then made a decision that would completely change the trajectory of his athletic career. He decided to focus solely on volleyball. A year later, Fisher […]
Matt Fisher is no stranger to high school sporting success.
A year ago, he celebrated with his Camarillo High teammates after winning a CIF-Southern Section Division 4 baseball championship.
Fisher then made a decision that would completely change the trajectory of his athletic career.
He decided to focus solely on volleyball.
A year later, Fisher is the Coastal Canyon League co-MVP, the best player on the area’s top-ranked boys volleyball team and The Star’s Boys Volleyball Player of the Year for the 2025 season.
“Last year was kind of my first glimpse at (the award), knowing that I am right there,” said Fisher, who made The Star’s All-County First Team last season. “I got to tell my mom, both my parents, my grandparents — that was a cool feeling.”
For Fisher, becoming a full-time volleyball player was a return to the family business.
Dan Fisher, his uncle, is the head volleyball coach at the University of Pittsburgh and was named the 2024 American Volleyball Coaches Association Division I National Coach of the Year. Fisher grew up around the sport, but only found his passion for it later.
“All I really knew was baseball,” Fisher said. “Volleyball just kind of started to creep into my life.”
In a short time, Fisher put together quite the career at Camarillo.
He ended his senior season as the program record-holder for assists in a single season after recording 562 this spring. He also amassed 115 kills, 31 solo blocks and 22 aces this season.
Those marks, awe-inspiring on their own, are made all the more impressive when Fisher’s injury history is taken into account.
Playing at an open gym in December, Fisher felt a sudden, debilitating pain in his back. He was diagnosed with a pars defect — stress fractures in his spine — as well as disc displacement.
“The next few days after that initial game, I was barely able to get out of bed,” Fisher said. “I wasn’t able to move, bend down, anything. It was excruciating pain.”
The senior was seriously limited early in the season, only playing a few rotations per match with seriously limited mobility. Four months of physical therapy helped finally get him back on the court.
Fisher’s injury showed just how integral he was to Camarillo’s play, but it also pushed every member of the team to rely on one another, according to head coach Stephen Zavala.
“In the very beginning of the season, everyone looked for Matt — ‘Matt is going to get us out of this slump,’ ” Zavala said. “He said, ‘It’s not a one-man show. It requires six people on the court.’ He really built that trust.
“We held him back, didn’t want him to play in the front, jumping, too much. Once he came back, we let the reins go and he was going at it.”
Some of Fisher’s best performances came during Camarillo’s tournament play, helping lead the Scorpions to a sixth-place finish at the vaunted Karch Kiraly Tournament of Champions at Santa Barbara High.
“He popped off,” Zavala said. “He was there to prove something.”
Fisher’s stellar play continued into Coastal Canyon League play, where he had 57 assists, 18 kills and four solo blocks in a win over Oak Park. The big outing demonstrated the senior’s most impressive skill: picking apart an opposing team’s blocking scheme, piece by piece.
That skill paired nicely with Camarillo’s stable of athletic hitters like Stanley Filiaga and Breck Bray, whom Fisher credited with helping lead the program to a successful season.
“Without the hitters, there is no success,” Fisher said. “It came through hard work with the hitters, being able to connect with them and figure out what they need to be successful, how to get them open, what they are most comfortable with. All the props to them — they were amazing this season.”
Camarillo earned a co-league championship with Royal and reached the CIF-Southern Section Division 3 playoffs, where the Scorpions lost to Santa Monica in five sets in the first round to end their season with a 20-6 record.
Every aspect of Fisher’s game, from his on-court skills to his leadership and even in his respect for the sport, evolved while he played for the 2024 Boys U19 National Team last year, he said.
“You are representing the country,” Fisher said. “Not just your high school, not just maybe your city, not your club, but the country. Everybody that lives in the USA.”
When Fisher returned from that experience, he was a different player, according to Zavala.
His focus was no longer just on becoming the best player he could be, but also on helping his team to evolve and reach their goals.
“From Day 1 to the end of the season, it was, ‘How can we make everyone better?’ ” Zavala said. “Matt implemented that.
“Even our third on the bench, he was trying to make that guy better so that he makes the No. 2 better, who makes the No. 1 better. It was full circle, from beginning to end. I think that was what really made this team very, very special this year.”
Fisher, who will continue his academic and volleyball career at Concordia University in Irvine next year, said he hopes the improvement Camarillo showed over the past four years can be an inspiration for other players and teams.
“As long as you put in the work and as long as you put faith in the system and your coaches, you will succeed,” Fisher said. “There is so much success to happen and so much untapped potential in every single player. I just hope that we were able to show that is a possibility. Success is a possibility, no matter where you start.”
The Star’s All-County Boys Volleyball Second Team
- Cooper Barrus, Thousand Oaks
- Breck Bray, Camarillo
- Mateo Hernandez, Moorpark
- Brody Gallagher, Oak Park
- Cameron Judd, Oaks Christian
- Max Mechtenberg, Ventura
- Matthew Currey, Westlake
- Tucker Prosser, Royal
- Curran Pendergraft, Oaks Christian
- Joseph Richardson, Hueneme
- Brandon Romero of Channel Islands
- Jayden Wallace, Foothill Tech
- Elijah Haigh, Foothill Tech
- Thomas Salie, Thousand Oaks
- Adael Perez, Rio Mesa
Dominic Massimino is a staff writer for the Star. He can be reached at dominic.massimino@vcstar.com. For more coverage, follow @vcsdominic on Twitter and Instagram.