Sailors own Sunset

LOS ALAMITOS — You’d think, judging from their penchant of getting into now-or-never scrapes on the volleyball court, that the Newport Harbor High Sailors were taking their cues from Harold Lee and Kumar Patel.

Lee and Patel duck an unsavory fate in “Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay,” while the Sailors escape from losing five-game matches they probably could have won in three.

More drama for everyone.

With Tuesday’s 25-13, 25-17, 24-26, 22-25, 15-9, daredevil win over Los Alamitos, ranked No. 6 in the CIF Southern Section Division I coaches’ poll, the top-ranked Sailors clinched the Sunset League title.

But it took them five games to do it, after winning with substantial margins in the first two games.

“We just always lose focus,” senior Tucker Peleuses said quietly. “It’s tough.

“But hopefully we’ll become more focused. It’s getting late in the season. But I have a feeling that we’ll get it and take a breath in that third and fourth game.”

Mark Leibermann had 13 kills and Peleuses had 10 to help Harbor win its 15th straight match. Both were hitting around .300, Sailors Coach Dan Glenn said. Max Volz had eight kills, and JB Green and Kyle Caldwell each added six.

Lackluster serving didn’t help either team in Game 3, and after trading points back and forth, the Griffins finally took a 24-20 lead.

The Sailors surged for a 24-24 tie, but Los Alamitos held on to win with a kill from junior Brian Miller.

While Newport’s serving has faltered in clutch situations earlier in the season, against Valencia at the Santa Barbara tournament, and against Edison, the Sailors always seem to find their way in Game 5. The Sailors are undefeated in five-game matches, winning all four of them.

“We got them pretty good the first two games, and then we just let them back into the game, which we shouldn’t do,” said Caldwell, who finished with 39 assists. “With the talent that we have, we should have just stayed on them and not let them come back. But we gave them that hope, with missing all our serves.”

Still, Leibermann had five aces on the day, and Volz had three.

The Sailors hung with Los Alamitos for much of Game 4 as well. Two service errors by the Griffins helped close the gap to 23-20, and Kyle McElderry spiked the ball down the middle to give Los Al a 24-20 lead. The Sailors came within three when the Griffins’ sided out, but gave them Game 4 when Michael Maddox’s serve went out of bounds.

“It was good to see them fight back, because they could have just laid down and died and they didn’t,” Griffins’ Coach Dave Huber said.

The Sailors (25-3, 9-0 in league) are practically a shoo-in for a No. 1 seed entering the playoffs. Only a Thursday game against Marina and Friday’s Battle of the Bay at the Bren Events Center remain before the postseason begins.

The Sailors haven’t lost since March 16, when they fell in three to the Sea Kings at the Orange County Championships.

“They’re big,” Huber said. “They’re scrappy. They do a whole lot of things really well. There’s not a whole lot of weaknesses as another team, you can look at and say, ‘We’re better than them here. Let’s go after that.’ They don’t have that.”

SORAYA NADIA McDONALD may be reached at (714) 966-4613 or at [email protected].