Pierce Upstages Long Beach City to Win State Title

Middle blocker Terhan Douglas was still shaking his head in amazement, 15 minutes after the match was over.

And his teammates were still shaking their fists in the air, after the Pierce College men’s volleyball team won the junior college state championship Friday night with a 15-8, 15-13, 11-15, 15-10 upset over Long Beach City College at Orange Coast College.

“This is incredible,” Douglas said. “Just incredible.”

The Long Beach players, the ones with the long faces, didn’t know about that. The Vikings thought the fired-up Pierce squad was plenty credible.

“Pierce came right by us,” Long Beach middle blocker Sam Blood said. “Our passing was pretty bad, and they played just great. They’re a great team.”

The Brahmas certainly looked good at the outset of the first game when Pierce jumped out to a 4-0 lead behind the serving of Brian Van Meter.

After Long Beach tied the score, 4-4, the teams traded points and sideouts until Pierce scored five consecutive points to take a 9-6 lead. Three sideouts later, with the Brahmas holding a 9-7 advantage, Pierce sophomore Matt Bellers hit for a point and blocked for another. Mark Grondin stuffed a Long Beach kill attempt and another Viking kill attempt was long. When Long Beach’s Cass Cowell hit into the net, the Brahmas led, 14-7.

Long Beach finally got a sideout and scored one point before again losing the ball. Two Long Beach attacking errors gave Pierce the game.

Pierce jumped out early in the second game, 8-2, and withstood a Long Beach rally that tied the score, 10-10 and 13-13. Again Pierce won, however, as two consecutive spikes by Blood went long.

The Brahmas lost a seesaw battle in the third game, but led from start to finish in the fourth.

“This is just like a dream,” said Grondin, a freshman from Chaminade High. “I knew we could do it. I just knew it. We didn’t leave anything out. I’d say this was our best match of the year.”

Pierce Coach Ken Stanley would have said that, too. And in fact, he did.

“This was a super match. This has been a very surprising team. This is going to be hard to duplicate,” he said.

In winning the state title, the Brahmas duplicated the feat of the 1986 Pierce team.

Pierce, which finished the season 18-3 overall, entered the four-team tournament as the No. 2-seeded team. Long Beach (17-4) was seeded first. Friday’s title match marked the third time Long Beach had been in the state final in the past four years. The Vikings won the championship in 1985.

“Long Beach is a great team,” Douglas said. “Tonight, it was just who wanted it the most. And we wanted it.”

Pierce had defeated the Vikings in five games last week in a regular-season South Coast Conference match at Pierce. Blood felt the Brahmas gained confidence from that win.

“We didn’t play as well as we should have and they played well the last time we saw them,” he said. “We knew Pierce was a good team. They got us the last time.

The Vikings reached the final by defeating West Valley College, the lone Northern California team in the tournament, 15-3, 14-16, 15-5, 15-5, in the semifinal round earlier Friday.

The Brahmas got to the championship match by virtue of their 15-6, 16-14, 15-7 semifinal victory over El Camino.

In that match, Bellers and outside hitter Rico Guimaraes shared team-high honors with 15 kills, while middle blocker Douglas had seven stuff blocks and Aaron Dorr served three aces.

In the first game, Pierce spotted El Camino a point before running off five points and storming to victory. El Camino (15-6) rallied to tie the second game, 14-14, before Pierce got a sideout and the winning points on a tip by Guimaraes and a block at the net by Manzo and Douglas.

In the third game, Pierce took a 10-1 lead and was never threatened.

The Brahmas were pleased with their semifinal showing, but not overly so.

“The whole team played well,” Guimaraes said, “but we didn’t play as well as we could have.”

Against Long Beach, they did.