Girls’ Volleyball: Laguna Beach sweeps Newport

When it came right down to it, the Laguna Beach High girls’ volleyball team simply played with more tenacity than Newport Harbor in a nonleague match played Tuesday at Laguna Beach High.

The Breakers dove all over the court to keep volleys alive and their backline defense handled some of the Sailors’ hardest kill attempts.

The grittiness paid off for the Breakers, who came away with a 25-19, 25-16, 25-22 sweep over the younger Sailors in the final nonleague contest for both squads.

Laguna Beach (3-5) kicks off their Orange Coast League schedule vs. Godinez on the Thursday and Newport Harbor (1-7) opens play in the Sunset League play against Marina, also on Thursday.

Lexi McKeown, who has committed to play beach volleyball at Florida State, led the Breakers with 11 kills and Lucy Fontenot and Taylor Magee each had seven kills.

The match featured several long rallies.

“I thought that we followed our game plan really well, which was to be patient and score points in long rallies,” Breakers’ Coach Conner Tanner said. “We served our targets really consistently and we didn’t get aced very much.”

The Sailors’ game plan was to set up kills for Donovan as often as possible and the middle blocker certainly took her shots, finishing with 12 kills.

But the Breakers’ back line successfully defended many of Donovan’s kill attempts.

“The defense is getting a lot more disciplined and they are digging more balls,” Tanner said.

With Jasmine Amire serving to open the first game, Newport Harbor quickly jumped out to a 4-1 lead, keyed in part to a pair of kills by Donovan.

A kill Magee gave Laguna Beach its frst lead at 7-6 and the Breakers never trailed again in the first game.

The second game started out similar to the first, with the Sailors breaking out on top.

Three kills by Delaney DeCinces helped the Sailors build a 5-2 lead before the Sailors took over with a flurry of kills, blocks combined with unforced errors from Newport Harbor.

In the third game, the Sailors broke out on top and never looked back.

Laguna Beach led 24-20 when an ace from DeCinces and an unforced error by the Breakers got the Sailors to within two.

But Donovan’s long serve out of bounds gave the Breakers the win in the game and the match.

“I was disappointed with the way we played,” Newport Harbor Coach Dan Glenn said. “We’re young and we’re getting better but it is just not an ok thing to get outplayed. Hopefully we can continue to improve but I did feel like we took a little bit of a step back tonight.”

DeCinces finished with 19 assists.