MANHATTAN BEACH – Corona del Mar’s boys volleyball team needed to play a perfect match to beat Mira Costa in their CIF-SS playoff game Friday.
The Sea Kings did not do that.
Mira Costa’s impressive size, athleticism and savvy were too much for Corona del Mar, which was trying to advance to the Division 1 championship game to face Sunset League rival Huntington Beach.
Mira Costa swept Corona del Mar, 25-13, 25-21, 25-20, at Mira Costa High in the final round of pool play.
The Sea Kings made too many service errors and other missteps to keep pace with Mira Costa. Corona del Mar is a youngish team, and played with only one senior on the floor, senior libero Brogan Glenn.
Corona del Mar on was led by junior outside hitter Ben Brown’s 10 kills and junior setter Drake Foley had 20 assists.
MIra Costa (32-2) won Pool A with a 3-0 record. It will play Huntington Beach (34-3), the Pool B winner, in the Division 1 championship match next week at Cerritos College. The match will be Friday, May 16, or Saturday, May 17.
The CIF-SS finals schedule will be announced Monday.
Mira Costa defeated Huntington Beach in the final of the Redondo/Mira Costa tournament on Feb. 22. Mira Costa lost to Loyola in the CIF-SS Division 1 final last year.
Corona del Mar (24-6) will continue its season in the CIF Southern California Regional that begins May 20. Regional brackets will be released May 18.
The Sea Kings went 2-1 in pool play in Pool A with wins over San Clemente and Beckman. Mira Costa swept Beckman and San Clemente in pool play.
Mira Costa’s balanced attack showed up on the stat sheet. Senior 6-foot-6 outside hitter Thatcher Fahlbusch had a team-high 11 kills, Mateo Fuhrbringer, a 6-4 sophomore outside, had nine kills, and 6-5 senior middle blocker Alex Heins had eight kills.
Mustangs senior Andew Chapin, a 6-2 setter who signed with USC, had 35 assists.
Mira Costa has a front row that includes 6-11 opposite hitter Grayson Bradford (UCLA signee) and 6-6 junior Wyatt Davis (UC Santa Barbara commit).
Even with all of that height up front, Chapin was the player who made things happen for Mira Costa on Friday with digs, passing and sets and he can slam the ball over the net when the opportunity is there.
“He does a lot,” said Mira Costa coach Greg Snyder. “He serves, he plays ‘D,’ he blocks, he can hit. A lot of teams focus on our hitters as they should, but Andrew’s capable of doing things himself and he gets the ball to the right hitter at the right time which is absolutely incredible.”
Mira Costa established control early. The Mustangs sprinted to a 7-1 lead in the first set on their way to the 25-13 win.
Corona del Mar’s only leads Friday came in the second set, the largest at 10-6. Mira Costa caught up at 16-16. Two kills by Fahlbusch, a block by Chapin and a kill by Heins on another of Chapin’s nifty sets led the Mustangs to the 25-21 win in that set.
The Sea Kings hung in there in the early going of the third set until Mira Costa again pulled away with Fuhbringer’s hitting and serving sparking the Mustangs to the 25-20 win to take the match.
Snyder said Corona del Mar was better Friday than in the previous two times the Mustangs played the Sea Kings, both Mira Costa wins — a nonleague match that was the season opener for both teams, and in the Best of the West tournament in San Diego.
“They were more cohesive, for sure,” Snyder said. “They passed a lot better.”
Corona del Mar coach Katey Thompson wanted a different outcome but acknowledged Mira Costa’s superiority.
“They’re an absolutely exceptional team,” she said. “Skill-wise they’re great. But their physicality is what really sets them above the rest.”
Thompson hopes the Sea Kings get another chance to play Mira Costa in the regional playoffs.
“Hopefully this is something we can learn from going into regionals,” she said. “Every time we’ve played them we’ve gotten a little bit better.”
Fuhrbringer’s father, Matt Fuhrbringer, was an Orange County athlete of the year in the early 1990s as a basketball and volleyball star at Estancia.
Before the match, Mira Costa’s players wore T-shirts over their uniforms that read “Live Like Braun” and had a Loyola logo in the middle of a setting sun. That was in honor of Levi Braun, a Loyola High student who died this past weekend after being struck by a car while walking on a Manhattan Beach street.
A “Live Like Braun” scholarship fund has been established at Loyola.
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