Sailors earn share of Sunset League title
HUNTINGTON BEACH — One high school boys’ volleyball team played for a share of the Sunset League championship, while the other tried to avoid splitting third place.
Both wound up finished tied in their respective spots.
Newport Harbor swept host Edison, 25-22, 25-20, 25-21, on Tuesday, claiming first in league for the first time in five years. The result left the Sailors in a tie atop the league with Huntington Beach at 9-1, and Edison moved into a tie for third with Los Alamitos at 5-5.
Both have one more match left before the CIF Southern Section Division 1 playoffs begin. The Sailors, the league’s No. 1 representative because they hold the head-to-head points tiebreaker against Huntington Beach, close out the regular season at home in the Battle of the Bay rivalry with Corona del Mar on Friday.
The postseason is starting a little early for Edison.
The Chargers and Los Alamitos are fighting for the league’s third-and-final guaranteed playoff berth. The league playoff match to determine third is at a neutral site, Fountain Valley High, on Wednesday at 5 p.m.
The Sailors know all about those types of contests. They played in one two years ago, when the Sailors lost to Edison at Huntington Beach, ending their 28-year run of making the postseason.
Coach Rocky Ciarelli wasn’t guiding the Sailors back then. In his two years at the helm, Newport Harbor has qualified for the playoffs each time.
This time around, Ciarelli said he believes the Sailors will earn one of the top four seeds in the playoffs. The outcome of Friday’s Battle of the Bay won’t affect where Newport Harbor is seeded.
“It will be done before that,” said Ciarelli, referring to Friday’s release of the playoff pairings at 2 p.m., coming before Newport Harbor and CdM play at 6:45 p.m. “We’ll see what [the section playoff committee] will do. Huntington is [ranked] No. 1 right now, but we have to be seeded in front of Huntington.”
The Sailors, who improved to 21-6 overall, are ranked No. 4. The No. 2 and 3 teams are Los Angeles Loyola and Manhattan Beach Mira Costa. Newport Harbor beat Loyola at the Best of the West Invitational on March 12, and it lost at home to Mira Costa on March 22.
Newport Harbor split it league matches with Huntington Beach, and each went four sets. The Chargers tried to become the second team in league to knock off the Sailors.
Edison appeared as if it might avoid Wednesday’s match the way it started on Tuesday. They opened Game 1 on an 8-2 run, forcing Ciarelli to call a timeout.
With the Oilers playing host to lowly Fountain Valley, the Sailors could ill-afford to lose their league finale. Dropping the contest to Edison would ensure the Oilers’ fifth straight outright league crown.
The Sailors returned to the court and their deficit grew to as high as eight points. Down, 12-4, Newport Harbor went on a 15-6 spurt to surpass Edison. The Sailors got contributions from Landon Monroe and Ethan Talley, who combined for six kills during the stretch, and Spencer Lawrence and Cole Pender played well.
A handful of Newport Harbor students kept yelling Pender’s name while he served. With Pender serving, the Sailors took a 19-18 lead. The teams went back and forth, playing even three times, until a service error put Newport Harbor up, 22-21.
The rest of the way, Carlos Rivera and Talley teamed up to stuff a shot, and then Pender produced one of his 11 kills. On the second set point situation, Talley and Rivera combined to block Trent Williams.
The Sailors had to rally again in Game 2. They once again fell behind, 8-2, and Ciarelli called a timeout.
“As they’re maturing a little bit, you know, they don’t let things bother them quite as much,” Ciarelli said. “They hung in there and there’s something to be said about that. It’s not good to start like that, but it’s good that we had the composure to hang in there and come back.”
The Sailors’ length brought them back in the second set. They trailed, 16-8, before Monroe produced a kill.
That was the start of the Sailors reeling off eight straight points. Half of those points came on four consecutive blocks. Lawrence turned away back-to-back shots by Garrett White, Pender followed that up with a block of Williams, and then Rivera stuffed Jacob Morgan.
The Sailors eventually caught the Chargers at 16-16. They jumped ahead for good on a Monroe kill. Newport Harbor outscored Edison, 7-2, down the stretch.
Rivera, who totaled 37 assists and four blocks, helped Newport Harbor storm back. He moved the ball around, Dayne Chalmers and Lawrence finished with seven kills apiece. Talley and Monroe had six kills each, Talley added five blocks and Monroe five digs and two blocks.
“I think when you get up that big and everything is going [well], you maybe tend to relax a little bit,” Edison Coach Matt Skolnik said. “You just can’t do that against a good team like Newport Harbor.”
