Sea Kings can’t hold on

HUNTINGTON BEACH — By scratching and clawing just to make it to the final of the Orange County Championships, the Corona del Mar High boys’ volleyball team proved adept at playing from behind.

Playing from ahead, however, didn’t work out as well Monday night for the Sea Kings.

Huntington Beach rallied to top CdM, 18-25, 25-17, 15-12, in the Division I title match at Edison High.

The red-hot Oilers, ranked No. 3 in the CIF Southern Section Division I coaches’ poll, went undefeated in six tournament matches. No. 4 Corona del Mar, meanwhile, lost its first two pool-play matches on Friday — one to the Oilers — and qualified for the quarterfinals via a tiebreaker. CdM also saved a match point in its semifinal match against Edison.

But Monday, the errors multiplied for the Sea Kings (7-6) as the match went on.

“Our execution was certainly better in Game 1 than it was Game 2,” CdM Coach Steve Conti said. “I think Huntington picked up its level, and we had a lot of unforced hitting errors and serving errors in Games 2 and 3. It’s really getting to the point in our season where not playing enough isn’t an excuse anymore. We’ve just got to be a little more disciplined in our block, and somehow find a way to be a little bit better defensively.”

Sophomore Parker Brown was hot early, pounding out four kills in Game 1 as the Sea Kings took control. But Huntington Beach (15-3) went on a 9-3 spurt midway through Game 2. The run, which ended with the designated home team up, 20-13, was capped by three straight blocks, one from senior tournament MVP Nick Iorfino and two from junior setter Ben Simons.

From there, CdM could only get as close as five points.

Serving errors also hurt the Sea Kings early in the decisive third game, three of them contributing to an early 5-3 Huntington Beach advantage. CdM was within 13-11 late, but Iorfino added two more kills to close it out.

Iorfino and senior Nick Siegel led the Oilers with eight kills each.

Seniors Weston Nielsen and Joey Booth, along with Brown, all had seven kills for the Sea Kings. Junior setter Nick Curci had 13 assists, and Brown added 12.

Nielsen and Booth were both named to the all-tournament team.

“We were expecting [the Sea Kings] to come out hard, which they did,” Iorfino said. “We’re just very consistent when it comes to putting balls away. We step up in tough situations.”

Consistency has been a struggle at times for the Sea Kings. But Conti said he at least felt better after Monday’s loss than he did Friday, after the pool-play defeats at the hands of Huntington Beach and Mater Dei.

“The way that we went home Friday night, it wasn’t just that we lost,” Conti said. “It was that we didn’t play with any heart or any fight. Today, we maybe didn’t get the victory, but I’ll sleep well knowing our kids played with a lot of heart and a lot of fight. Hopefully this will allow us to take another step in a positive direction to have us improve as a team.”

Nielsen, the team captain, said he thinks that will come.

“At a couple of points in this tournament, we all just clicked at the same time and kind of figured each other out,” he said. “I think when we all come together and we’re on our game, we can really beat a good team. We can beat anybody.

“We definitely have our best volleyball ahead of us.”

Corona del Mar is back at Edison for a nonleague match against the Chargers on Friday, before visiting Irvine on March 30 for its Pacific Coast League opener.