Lights shut out on Laguna Beach and this reporter

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The lights have been turned out in the gym here at Harvard-Westlake and I’m typing with only my laptop’s glow to show me the way. So I’ll try to do my best to bring you Laguna Beach’s side of the story after its three-game loss to Harvard-Westlake in the Southern California Regional Division III final on Tuesday.

Following its heart-breaking loss, Laguna Beach Coach Lance Stewart was doing a lot of head shaking. It was just hard for him to understand how the Breakers were totally outworked.

‘We simply got into a rut in the first two games,’ said Stewart, whose Breakers were looking to advance to the state divisional championships for the second consecutive year.’I told them before the match that the team that was the most insistent tonight would win. And [Harvard-Westlake] was the most insistent.’

Laguna Beach struggled to find any consistency in the first two games and its strong effort in Game 3 was too little, too late. Still, there were some bright spots -- Arizona-bound OH Dana Hutchinson had a team-high 14 kills and Piper Obradovich finished with 10 kills and 21 digs.

However, it was not enough to beat a team Stewart described as ‘the best we’ve played all year, beside Mira Costa.’

Funny, that’s exactly what I blogged while sitting in a sun-filled room this morning.

-- Austin Knoblauch