HUNTINGTON BEACH – The Huntington Beach girls volleyball team entered Tuesday night’s match against No. 10 Newport Harbor on a two-game losing streak in the Sunset League and missing three key players.
Then the visiting Sailors won two of the first three sets, and the Oilers could see their chances of winning the league title slipping away. But Huntington Beach was able to regroup and rallied for a victory, 20-25, 25-20, 22-25, 25-21, 15-13.
The Oilers (19-9, 6-2) are tied for first place with Los Alamitos with two matches remaining in the regular season.
“Obviously this is big,” Oilers coach Craig Pazanti said. “We were on a two-match losing streak and not only have (we) lost, we’ve lost pretty badly … (This) was just a chance to get ourselves back in the league championship race.”
The Oilers were without three of their key players. The players were ruled ineligible for two matches Monday for playing in a fundraising tournament, the Fall Fours/Halloween Haunt Beach tournament, on Sunday at the Huntington Beach Pier.
The tournament is a four-on-four, co-ed tournament where the players dress in costumes.
According to the CIF-SS ruling, the three Oilers players, as well as some players at other county schools, violated Bylaw 600, which states: A student on a high school team becomes ineligible if the student competes in a contest on an “outside” team in the same sport during the student’s high school season of sport.
Pazanti wondered Tuesday night how sand volleyball and indoor volleyball can be considered the same sport.
“That’s a debate for another time,” Pazanti said. “From what I gather, people called and asked for verification from CIF if it was OK to play in that tournament. They were given the OK.”
Pazanti said the Oilers embraced the next-player-up mentality throughout the match.
“We were playing with two new outside hitters tonight … to have Kierra Pearson and Aubryn (Coale) come in and do a great job for us, it was good,” he said.
Pearson led the way with 17 kills and 20 digs. Anna Carroll had 13 kills, and Ashleigh Atsaros and Hannah Russell added 11 and nine, respectively.
“We knew that everyone had to contribute tonight,” said Oilers sophomore libero Ashley Stevens, who had 31 digs. “We knew that we couldn’t focus one player doing all of the work so everyone had to do something tonight.”
The Oilers found their comfort level in the fourth set. Stevens pointed to the victory in the second as another key moment in the match.
“We knew that we had to win the second game and to just win one (game) to keep positive,” Stevens said.
The Sailors are tied with Edison at 5-3. The Sailors and Chargers meet Thursday night.
“When you play Huntington (Beach) you know there are going to be a lot of digs and a lot of long rallies,” Newport Harbor coach Dan Glenn said. “They played harder than us at the end and they deserved to win.”
Contact the writer: dcalhoun@ocregister.com
