Huntington Beach girls’ volleyball pulls away from Alemany after tight first set

The Huntington Beach girls’ volleyball program finds itself in a familiar spot — among the best and striving to top them all.

Chasing such ambition will take no shortage of talent, an area in which the Oilers are not lacking. Experience can also help, a quality longtime coach Craig Pazanti and a veteran roster are leaning on this postseason.

Third-seeded Huntington Beach withstood an early challenge, then rolled in the final two sets of a 28-26, 25-16, 25-14 win over Mission Hills Alemany to kick off pool play in the CIF Southern Section Division 1 playoffs on Wednesday night.

It began with Huntington Beach trailing 18-12 and needing kills from Kylie Leopard and Haylee LaFontaine to fight off two set points in the opening game. LaFontaine, a Cal Poly beach volleyball commit who had a match-high 18 kills, provided the decisive strike on her team’s final four points of the first set.

“A little bit sluggish, but that’s kind of been our problem for the last couple weeks, even in league, was just slow starts,” Pazanti said. “We’ve got to stop doing that. We just gave away too many in the first set. Too many unforced errors — service error, passing error, hitting error, just on us.

“When you play a good team, and [the Warriors] are definitely a good team, it’s hard to come back getting down that much early, but to our credit, they came out, they just kept grinding and understand what it takes to get to the finals. You got to win, and you got to have some luck, and you have to make sure you’re doing everything you can because you don’t want to give away sets when that’s the tiebreaker if there ends up being some sort of a three-way tie.”

Huntington Beach (27-7) has appeared in three CIF finals, winning one in Division IIAA under Rocky and Cammy Ciarelli in 1996. The Oilers were finalists in Division 1A in 2009 and in Division 2 in 2021.

The Oilers had eight days between matches, the previous being a five-set defeat on their home court against Edison. Huntington Beach had surrendered a set in four consecutive matches, but dropping their regular season finale was a reminder of how fragile the dream of a title can be.

“We now remember what it’s like to lose, and we really hated it,” Olivia Foye, a Princeton-bound libero, said of the loss to the Chargers. “It was honestly a good wake-up call for us.”

Opposite Taylor Ponchak, a Stanford beach volleyball commit, had seven of her 11 kills in the second set, placing her shots in various locations to keep Alemany (22-8) off balance. She shared that the open spots to hit are called out by setter Dani Sparks (40 assists).

“I’ve been playing in beach for a long time, and that’s just something that we train on that court,” said Sparks, who is also committed to play beach volleyball at Cal Poly. “I’ve learned to look to see where the open spots are and where the people are.”

Ellie Esko also had 11 kills for Huntington Beach. Leopard finished with eight kills and two total blocks. Amika Swanson and Ponchak each provided four block assists.

“Got the heart pumping a little, but we’ve been in this situation before,” Ponchak said of the tight first set. “Knock on wood, we pull through more often than not.”

Havyn Rolle, Gabi Polishuk and Alanah Clemente had eight kills apiece for Alemany. Kayla Firestone distributed 24 assists.

Surf League champion Huntington Beach will continue pool play with a home match on Tuesday against league rival Los Alamitos (31-6). The Oilers will travel to take on No. 2-seeded Manhattan Beach Mira Costa (36-2) on Oct. 28. Mira Costa beat Los Alamitos in straight sets on Wednesday.