Oilers unable to finish
LONG BEACH — The Huntington Beach High girls’ volleyball team appeared on its way to meeting Santa Margarita in the premier division in the CIF Southern Section playoffs for the second year in a row.
The Oilers easily took the first two sets in the Division 1 quarterfinal match at Long Beach Poly on Saturday. It looked like the Oilers were going to sweep, and then the unthinkable happened. They lost the third set, the fourth set, and then the fifth set.
The Jackrabbits roared back and upset the No. 4-seeded Oilers, 18-25, 15-25, 25-22, 25-22, 15-6.
Long Beach Poly (26-8), not Huntington Beach, gets to travel to face top-seeded Santa Margarita in the semifinals on Tuesday. The winner moves on to the section finals.
“We had a chance to win it. We stopped passing the ball,” Huntington Beach Craig Pazanti said. “We let their block get involved and you got to give them some credit.
“They’re just big, physical and athletic, and they’ve played five sets every match in this tournament. I knew that if it got to five it was not going to scare them.”
Unlike Long Beach Poly, Santa Margarita hasn’t been tested in the postseason, having swept its quarterfinal match at Temecula Great Oak on Saturday and sweeping its second-round match at home with Corona del Mar on Thursday.
Both Santa Margarita and Huntington Beach had first-round byes, and for the Oilers, the long layoff seemed to affect them. They went five sets at home with Rancho Cucamonga in the second round, and in the quarterfinals, when the Oilers (30-4) were on the verge of a sweep, they let Long Beach Poly come back.
The Jackrabbits, the runner-up finisher from the Moore League, won the third set, 25-22. Long Beach Poly proved to be a dangerous team, and it was one of two programs from its league reaching the quarterfinals, the other was league champion Lakewood.
Huntington Beach, one of the Sunset League’s finest, had to regroup after taking the first two sets. While everyone seemed to play well in the first two sets for the Oilers, outside hitter Cami Sanchez and opposites Anna Carroll and Jillian Kim hammering kills and middle blocker Julia Jackson turning away shots, Long Beach Poly came alive in Game 3.
Penny Tusa sparked the Jackrabbits. She always seemed to break a tie with a kill, and when the Oilers got within, 23-22, after a kill by Jackson and a service ace by Mia Christiansen, there was Oni Ofoegbu stuffing an Oiler shot.
Ofoegbu, who is 6-foot-2, stood in the way of the Oilers making their second straight semifinal appearance in the top division. She blocked three shots and recorded a kill early in Game 4, allowing the Jackrabbits to take a 7-2 lead.
Huntington Beach came back. The Oilers caught the hosts at 16-16, and the set went back and forth from there. There would be six more ties, the last at 22-22. Carroll elevated her play down the stretch, producing three kills, but it wasn’t enough.
The Jackrabbits scored the final three points in Game 4. Ofoegbu blocked Sanchez and then Cristina Baily.
In the decisive fifth set, Long Beach Poly jumped out to a 3-0 lead. There was Ofoegbu stuffing another shot, after a kill by her and Kalyah Williams. The Jackrabbits went ahead, 7-3, before the Oilers called a timeout.
The Long Beach Poly lead just kept growing because Ofoegbu, and kills by Tusa and Alannah Cutler and Chastity Ah-Hong. Williams put away the Oilers with a kill.
“That was an incredible team we just played. They were unbelievable the first two sets,” Long Beach Poly Coach Leland McGrath said. “It was really cool that our girls bought in to hang in there.”
