Cougars Cannot Slow Mira Costa

The Capistrano Valley boys’ volleyball team ran into a legend in the final of the Southern Section Division I tournament Saturday.

Manhattan Beach Mira Costa, touted as one of the best high school teams ever assembled, defeated Capistrano Valley, 15-6, 15-7, 15-5.

It was small consolation to the second-seeded Cougars that no one else could beat the Mustangs this season, either. Top-seeded Mira Costa finished 23-0, losing only four games all season.

“It’s hard to believe that four years came down to this,” Capistrano Valley’s Mike Tully said. “I don’t think that, mentally, we were prepared.”

Capistrano Valley was making its second appearance in a final, it lost to Huntington Beach in 1993 in its only other appearance in a section title match.

Mira Costa is led by two players headed to NCAA Division I schools, UCLA-bound Adam Naeve, 6 feet 10, and UC Santa Barbara-bound Kevin Collins, 6-5. Naeve and Collins each had 15 kills and eight blocks.

“We knew what they are like,” Capistrano Valley Coach Darren Utterback said. “They are a bunch of beach players. The beach game doesn’t get any bigger than at Manhattan Beach. They are out there watching the pros. Their alumni is like a list of who’s who.”

The Mustangs broke a 3-3 tie in the first game and never looked back.

“I’ll tell you something, after Game 1, if you’re not with us, forget it,” Mira Costa Coach Mike Cook said. “We will just roll. You just can’t let us get comfortable. That is the modus operandi of this team. We had a scouting report on [Capistrano Valley] that was a little bit scary, but we didn’t feel any pressure tonight out here.”

Volleyball aficionados often say the best high school squad ever was Mira Costa’s 1990 section Division 4-A championship team that went 22-0 and featured four players bound for NCAA Division I teams. Mira Costa won its only other title in 1984.

Cook, Mustang coach for 24 years, stopped short of saying this Mustang squad was equal to the 1990 edition.

“They played as well tonight as the ’90 team in the final. This team wanted to emulate the ’90 team,” he said.

Capistrano Valley (19-2) also had a good team assembled this season--its only regular-season loss was to Laguna Beach.

“It’s frustrating because we had such a good year and to play so hard to get here and not be able to score points, that’s frustrating,” Utterback said.

The Cougars deserve credit for swinging away against the Mustangs’ towering block. Senior Brad Leach led the Cougars with eight kills, sophomore Beau Rawi and junior Ryan Thurlow each had seven and Tully, a senior, had six.

“I’m just really proud of them,” Utterback said. “They played with a lot of heart. They went out there and played as hard as they could.”

In the end, trailing, 14-1, Capistrano Valley saved six match points and scored four more points before Naeve killed a Cougar overpass for the victory.