University Enjoys Ending Streak
With one errant spike, 23 years of frustration ended last week for the University boys’ volleyball team.
University (12-3, 6-0 in league) defeated Laguna Beach, 3-15, 15-4, 15-10, 4-15, 16-14, to take the inside track to the Pacific Coast League title, something Laguna Beach has won for the past 10 seasons.
Laguna Beach’s Miles McGann, who will play at USC next season, had 35 kills Wednesday but sent his final spike over the block of 5-foot-7 Morgan McGilvray and 6-4 junior Adam Bramwell and inches past the end line.
“My first thought was, ‘Oh my God, we beat Laguna Beach,’ ” University senior setter Nima Farhadi said. “In my four years at Uni, the varsity maybe took one game off them. I don’t know how we did it.”
Seniors Farhadi, Matt Larson, John Drachman and junior Derek Tran all played big roles in the upset and have been key players for the Trojans all season. University also got a boost from middle blocker Terrill Wolf, who served for eight consecutive points to give University a 9-7 lead in the fifth game.
“That’s how it’s been all season; that it hasn’t been just one person,” University Coach Jo Ann Byars said. “It was sweet.”
How rare was University’s victory? Consider the following:
* None of the Trojans were even born when University won its last best-of-five match against Laguna Beach in 1976. Laguna Beach has won 25 of the 27 meetings.
* Laguna Beach hadn’t lost an on-court varsity-versus-varsity Pacific Coast League match since losing a four-game match at Woodbridge in 1988.
In 1995, Laguna Beach forfeited a match to Laguna Hills for using a player in the JV and varsity matches.
Last season, Laguna Hills defeated Laguna Beach, but the Artists had their JVs play that match. Due to a scheduling conflict, the Artist varsity played in the final of the Redondo tournament on the same day and won.
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Irvine baseball Coach Bob Flint previously announced he would retire at the end of this season but recently decided to return to coach the Vaqueros for one more season.
“They would have had to fill my position with a walk-on coach,” Flint said. “I said ‘Let’s try to avoid that.’ So I’ll stay one more year and it gives them over a year to hire an on-staff person.”
Flint will continue to teach at Irvine.
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Los Amigos golf Coach John Keating made an eagle on a par four last week at Mile Square, sinking his three-iron from 210 yards on the sixth hole. But he wasn’t even the first coach in his league to hole out from the fairway this season.
Garden Grove golf Coach Mel Baty made a double eagle on the par-five seventh at Willowick earlier this season.
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Sunny Hills has been named the boys’ basketball CIF Scholastic State champion. The Lancers had a cumulative team grade-point average of 3.75 on an unweighted 4.0 scale.