SOUTHERN SECTION VOLLEYBALL PLAYOFFS : Newport Harbor Avenges Loss, Defeats El Toro to Advance

Dan Glenn, the Newport Harbor High School boys’ volleyball coach, knows how tough El Toro can be in tournament games, so he was more than a little surprised when he looked at the scoreboard Wednesday night.

Freshman Mark McAnlis had 12 kill spikes and Ian Juberg added 10 as Newport Harbor cruised to a 15-10, 15-12, 15-10 victory over El Toro in a Southern Section 4-A wild-card playoff match at Newport Harbor.

The Sailors (10-5) will play at Lawndale Leuzinger (13-1) in a first-round match Friday at 7:30 p.m. El Toro ended the season 9-7.

Newport Harbor avenged a loss to El Toro in the Orange County championships in March. The Sailors had six aces Wednesday night, including five in the first game, to pull away.

Glenn said he was surprised by the sweep.

“El Toro finished third in the South Coast League,” Glenn said. “But I knew they weren’t a third-place team.

“Our last two games we’ve really started to mesh. The big part of our game has been transition. And we were digging the ball.”

The Sailors also were blocking. Alex Opoulos had five blocks and 10 kills and Russell Gan added three blocks as the Sailors held El Toro’s leading hitter, Mike Shannon, to nine kills.

“The same things killed us that have all year,” El Toro Coach Mike Jagd said. “We couldn’t execute the basic things that a team needs to. We didn’t have right-side blocking and we didn’t play good defense. Newport probably dug 25 or 30 balls and we dug three.”

In other wild-card matches:

University 3, Capistrano Valley 0--Martin Wagner had 16 kills and 12 blocks and Zolti Csanyi and Garrett Gee had 10 kills each as visiting University won, 15-11, 15-3, 15-6.

San Marcos 3, Huntington Beach 1--Huntington Beach (13-4) had 18 hitting errors in a 15-9, 15-10, 9-15, 15-1 loss.

Woodbridge 3, North Torrance 0--Scott Seymour had 12 kills, Todd Beebe had eight kills and Mike Manthei had seven kills and five blocks as Woodbridge (15-2) won, 15-5, 15-7, 15-6.