Girls’ Volleyball: CdM claims 11th straight outright PCL title
While Corona del Mar High’s 81-match winning streak in the Pacific Coast League ended last week, the Sea Kings extended another impressive run in league.
The Sea Kings claimed their 11th straight outright league title with a 25-10, 25-16, 25-23 sweep of University at home on Tuesday. During the string of championships, CdM has only dropped two matches, and those setbacks didn’t come back to haunt the Sea Kings.
The Sea Kings finished all alone in first at 9-1, ahead of Woodbridge. The Warriors stunned CdM, 25-16, 25-19, 23-25, 25-21, a week ago, handing the Sea Kings their first league loss since Oct. 21, 2008. But Woodbridge went into its regular-season finale with Northwood with a 7-2 record in league.
Since CdM fell at Woodbridge, it has bounced back by winning its final two league contests. In between those sweeps against Beckman and University, CdM went 3-1 at the always-tough two-day Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions, placing fifth on Saturday.
The next tournament for CdM (18-10) is the most important one: the CIF Southern Section Division 1 playoffs.
The section will release the postseason pairings on Friday, and because the Sea Kings won their league outright, they will be at home in the first round next Tuesday. Coach Steve Astor doesn’t expect CdM to get an easy first-round opponent.
“I doubt we’ll be in the top 10 in the final poll and we really shouldn’t be,” Astor said. “I know in the years past, we’ve gotten kind of a weaker team. I think we’ll get a really good second-place team or a very good third-place team from another league. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a local team because CIF likes to do that, [it likes] to [play] locals close to each other.”
The Sea Kings cruised in their tuneup before the postseason. They opened the match with University, which finished 3-7 in league, a lot better than the first time the two programs met on Oct. 6.
This time around, CdM produced six of the first seven points. Alexa Bonanno set Ashley Humphreys up for a couple of kills and Haley Petrucci had a kill, while Brooke Cuthbertson recorded two service aces. The Trojans called a timeout, hoping to stop CdM from running away with Game 1.
The Sea Kings kept firing away. Humphreys hammered three kills the rest of the way, giving her five in Game 1. She finished with 11 in the match. Christina Davenport had three kills in the first set, and Petrucci and Cuthbertson both added a couple of kills.
“I think we were learned our lesson from the first set the last time we played them, which they kind of barnstormed us a little bit,” said Astor, referring the Trojans taking Game 1, 25-23. “Last time we played University, [it] had a stranglehold on the match against us, but that’s when Brooke Cuthbertson kind of had her coming out party for us. We were down, 17-6, in set three the last time at University, and Brooke came in and changed what we’ve been doing.”
Cuthbertson played well again against University, finishing with six kills and five aces. As a team, CdM totaled 13 aces, only missing four serves.
“She’s just been the breakout kind of star of the year for us,” Astor said of Cuthbertson, who along with Bonanno (12 assists and six digs), Joanne Won (11 digs), Sophie Ganion (six digs) and Alex Osterberg was honored on senior night. “She waited her turn. She’s been just a phenomenal teammate. Everything we’ve asked her to do she’s done. She got her chance against University and she came through. That’s what you got to do when you’re not a starter. You got to wait your turn, but if she weren’t such a great teammate, she wouldn’t have got her chance. She’s what I want every kid in our program to be in terms of a person.”
