Boys’ Volleyball: CdM reaches OC final again
After his first match of the season earlier this week, Matt Ctvrtlik said the Corona del Mar High boys’ volleyball team could match up with Huntington Beach, the hottest team in the CIF Southern Section.
No program has topped the Oilers in two years.
Ctvrtlik and the Sea Kings will find out if they can compete with the Oilers. The Sea Kings look to end Huntington Beach’s 82-match winning streak when the two schools meet in the Division 1 final of the Orange County Championships on Monday at Edison High at 7 p.m.
Augie Miller helped CdM advance by recording eight kills on 10 attempts to sweep San Clemente, 25-19, 25-19, in a best-of-three semifinal at Edison on Saturday. The Sea Kings have won each of their first five contests in the tournament, including a 27-25, 25-14 sweep of Foothill in Saturday’s final pool-play match, followed up with a 25-14, 25-27, 15-9 quarterfinal win against Los Alamitos.
Since Ctvrtlik, a setter, and three other key players, outside hitter Ryan Moss, opposite Kevin Fults and outside hitter Sam Kobrine, played with the Sea Kings (10-3) for the first time on Tuesday after missing the first month of the season because they helped the CdM boys’ basketball team to a CIF Southern Section Division 3A runner-up finish and the quarterfinals of the CIF State Southern California Regional Division III playoffs, the Sea Kings have gone 6-0. They have only dropped one set during the stretch.
“I do think there’s a list of four or five schools that have the personnel to do it and we are one of them,” Sea Kings Coach Steve Conti said in regards to challenging the Oilers. “They’re more polished as a team right now because they’ve been playing together for a while. I don’t think it’s going to take us that long to get there. We showed flashes of brilliance this weekend.
“They’re so talented at every position. We have to play a spectacular match to go ahead of them at this point of the season.”
Huntington Beach (18-0) has swept every opponent this season, except for Manhattan Beach Mira Costa, which lost a best-of-three match to the Oilers at the Best of the West tournament last week in San Diego.
The Oilers’ previous setback came on March 18, 2013, in the finals of the OC Championships against San Clemente. They have gone on to set the longest winning streak in the section.
The OC Championships finale features the champions from last year’s top two divisions in the CIF Southern California Regional playoffs. Huntington Beach has claimed the last two Division I titles, while the Sea Kings won the Division II crown.
The Sea Kings lost only three times last season, twice to Huntington Beach, the eventual CIF Southern Section Division 1 champion, and once to Los Angeles Loyola in the semifinals of the CIF Southern Section Division 1 playoffs. TJ DeFalco, one of the Oilers’ top players from last season, is back. The 6-foot-4 senior outside hitter is bound for Long Beach State.
There will be plenty of talent in the gym on Monday. Moss, a 6-7 senior who had a combined 27 kills in three matches on Saturday, is heading to USC, while Fults, a senior who totaled 13 kills, is going to UC Santa Barbara. Ctvrtlik, a 6-5 junior who tallied 72 assists, 10 digs, five block assists and three service aces, is one of the most highly coveted juniors in the country.
The Oilers also feature a premier setter in senior Josh Tuaniga, a Long Beach State signee. Tuaniga and Huntington Beach eliminated Newport Harbor (5-8) from the OC Championships, beating their Sunset League foe, 25-16, 25-14, in the quarterfinals. The Sailors, who went 2-2 during the tournament, also dropped their last pool-play match in which San Clemente won, 25-23, 25-20.
Huntington Beach prevailed against Dana Hills, 25-19, 25-15, in the semifinals, ending the Dolphins’ 14-0 start to the season. The result set up a second straight finals matchup in the OC Championships between the Oilers and CdM.
“In some ways we can use the day for practice in the gym,” Conti said, “but it’s a big honor to play in the finals of the tournament again.”