NEWPORT BEACH – After a slow start, the Corona del Mar boys volleyball team quickly found the necessary path toward success Friday night.
The second-ranked Sea Kings had a two-point lead in the first set of their Orange County Championships Division 1 quarterfinal match against Mater Dei, before scoring five consecutive points to take control of the opener.
“We didn’t really control the ball well early,” CdM coach Steve Conti said. “But when we finally settled in and got in our comfort zone a little bit, I think we were siding out pretty good.”
The Sea Kings (9-1) closed the door on the first set and went ahead and completed the sweep, 25-15, 25-16, 25-19, at CdM to advance to today’s semifinals at Edison High.
CdM will face Edison today at noon. The Division 1 final is Monday night at Edison.
“When we serve tough and force teams to keep the ball off of the net, our block gets a lot better and our defense gets a lot better …I think that’s pretty typical of most teams,” Conti said. “We kind of feed off that. Our hitting gets pretty efficient.”
Joey Martino led the Sea Kings with 17 kills. Ryan Moss and Tommy Brooks had eight and six, respectively.
CdM opened the tournament with a four-set victory over JSerra. Martino and Sam Kobrine had nine kills apiece. Setter Matt Ctvrtlik had 65 assists in two matches. Last week, CdM finished third at the Best of the West Invitational.
“We’re definitely a lot more mature than we were last year, in a lot of ways,” Conti said. “But I also think that this team has the ability to get a fair amount better too because we have a lot of multi-sport athletes. We have five guys who came from basketball, one from soccer, so our season started a little bit late. There wasn’t much of a preseason that we had together, so we hope we can go ahead and keep on improving.
“This team’s biggest strength is the team. We don’t have to rely on any one guy. We have guys off of our bench that can come in and do some things, which is one of the things that will make us better down the stretch too. I think the competition in practice that we have this year is a lot tougher as well. I like this team. It seems like they want to try and accomplish some things this year.”
Edison defeated Orange Lutheran, 3-1, then swept Tesoro (which swept injury-plagued Esperanza) to reach the semifinals.
In the top half of the bracket, San Clemente swept its way to the semis, defeating Newport Harbor (25-12, 25-19, 25-17) and Laguna Hills (25-15, 40-38, 25-20). The Hawks had opened the tournament with a 25-20, 24-26, 17-25, 26-24, 15-10 victory over sixth-ranked Santa Margarita.
The Tritons will face top-ranked Huntington Beach. The Oilers defeated both San Juan Hills and Dana Hills in four sets.
Contact the writer: dcalhoun@ocregister.com
