Daily Journal Boys’ Volleyball Player of the Year: M-A’s Peter Chriss

Menlo-Atherton went through some growing pains after winning the Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division boys’ volleyball championship in 2018.

After the Bears’ 29-win season in 2018 came a carousel of head coaches with just one shared league title over the next four seasons. It’s no coincidence that, as standout setter Peter Chriss emerged, M-A regained its dominance on the volleyball court.

Chriss is a hybrid setter in the Bears’ 6-2 offense, and proved a force in every phase of the game during his senior season of 2025. Not only did he rank second on the team with 502 assists, his six-rotation presence saw him rank second in kills (229, 3.2 per set), third in service aces (27), and second in blocks (35), en route to M-A claiming its first outright Bay Division championship in seven years.

“He really contributed a lot to the whole program,” M-A head coach Michael Manalo said. “Him being able to do a little bit of everything for the team, that’s the type of kid he is.”

The 6-7 Chriss was one of two Bears to earn first-team All-PAL honors, along with junior outside hitter Ben Warner, who led the team in kills. Chriss was a double honoree, being named PAL Bay Division Player of the Year as well. Adding to the list, Chriss has been named Daily Journal Boys’ Volleyball Player of the Year.

Because of his height, it might seem strange Chriss has excelled as a primary setter since he took up the sport in sixth grade. His stature is more akin to high-flying attacks or towering walls of defense along the front row. While he listed as the Bears’ tallest player this season, however, this wasn’t always the case when he arrived at M-A for his freshman year of 2021-22.

“I wasn’t always tall,” Chriss said. “I grew maybe four inches in high school. I went in as a setter and I just got gifted with height, and it all worked out.”

That’s for sure. Chriss is coming off a busy summer, starting with earning All-Tournament honors as his Bay to Bay Volleyball Club 18U team took third place in the AAU Boys’ Volleyball Nationals Open Division, held June 30-July 3 in Orlando, Florida.

Chriss then missed his June 6 graduation ceremony because he was in Los Angeles training for his spot on the USA Volleyball U19 squad that would go onto compete in the Pan American Cup in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

“I was super excited,” Chriss said of being named to the team. “Any opportunity to represent my country and play at the highest level is amazing. Super cool to see the highest level of volleyball and the culture in other countries.”

The U19 National Team went on to claim the gold medal July 13 with a 25-20, 25-21, 25-18 sweep over host Mexico.

“(Playing against) the home team, which was awesome,” Chriss said. “All their fans came — 2,000 fans just yelling at you.”

Now, Chriss is enjoying some time playing recreational beach volleyball with his friends. Monday he was on the sand courts at Menlo College. Come the fall, he will be back indoors when he reports for duty at the NCAA Division I program at Penn State.

Like M-A, Penn State has gone through some growing pains after a long run as the dominant program in the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association. The Nittany Lions have won a record 36 EIVA regular-season championships, but fell short by settling for a second-place tie this year behind first-place Princeton.

When Chriss focuses on the setter position, though, good things happen. As a junior at M-A, Chriss was initially slated to play an all-around role in the 6-2 offense. But the plan changed when M-A’s other setter, Coen Chou, broke his arm in a freak accident during a 2024 match. The injury forced the Bears to revert to a 5-1 offense, and Chriss went on to record a career-high 701 assists on the season while the team went 26-7 overall, its best record since 2018.

“I wasn’t hitting anymore,” Chriss said. “But this year he was back and I was able to hit again.”

With Chou back in the mix this season, Chriss still surpassed the 2,000-assist plateau in his high school career. He did, however, fall shy of 2,500, finishing with 2,436 through four full varsity seasons.

If Chriss got his wish, he would have had far less than that. Following his junior year of 2024, M-A lost one of its leading attackers with the graduation of pin hitter Andrew Bernadicou. Chriss approached Manalo at the start of this season and asked if he could play exclusively as an attacker.

“It’s always fun,” Chriss said. “I mean, club, I don’t really get to hit much, and I know collegiately I probably won’t. So, at the high school level, being as tall as I am and being able to swing, it frees up other attackers and gives us more ability to score.”

Manalo, however, had other ideas.

“He’s been saying that for the last two years, and I said: ‘This is where you’re going to be helping the team, is both setting and hitting,’” Manalo said.

It proved to be a winning formula. M-A posted a 26-8 overall record, again falling three wins shy of the 2018 team’s program record. The proverbial asterisk beside the 2025 overall record, however, is that of M-A’s seven losses, four of them occurred when Chriss was away from the team due to his enlistment in the National Team Development Program pipeline, which led to his spot with the USA Volleyball U19 squad.

M-A ultimately faltered in the postseason. Despite Chriss recording a match-high 22 kills and adding a double-double with 33 assists in their playoff opener, the Bears got upset in the Central Coast Section Division I tournament in a four-set loss to rival Carlmont.

The Bears did revel in their one tournament championship of the season, March 22, at the Paganini Tournament at Sonoma Valley High School. M-A swept through all six matches, including a 25-13, 25-22 win over College Park-Pleasant Hill in the finals.

“Our whole team played well,” Chriss said, “and just steamrolled everyone, which was fun.”