Calvillo Sets Up Opponents on Thin Ice

It didn’t take long for Mary Calvillo to figure out her son was determined.

At age 6, Sean Calvillo was getting up at 4:30 in the morning to attend ice skating practice before heading out to elementary school.

“He had a personal drive to do this,” his mother said. “You can’t make a kid do that.”

Sean still continues his skating pursuits but also cherishes the time he’s had leading the Brethren Christian boys’ volleyball team.

The Warriors are second-seeded for the Southern Section Division V playoffs and have reached the semifinals at 7 tonight against Montebello Cantwell Sacred Heart at Calvary Chapel High.

Brethren Christian is enjoying its finest season in school history and is undefeated in 16 best-of-five matches. And Warrior Coach Jon Bahnsen said Calvillo’s skill and leadership are keys to the team’s success.

“My first thought when I saw Sean in his very first practice as a freshman was that I wasn’t going to have to coach my setter that much,” Bahnsen said of his four-year starter.

“He’s very natural. He gets to the ball no matter what. He’s extremely quick and agile, and I think a lot of that is from the lower-body strength he’s built from skating”

Calvillo, a veteran of junior national skating competitions, will attempt to qualify for the senior nationals at a regional competition in October in Escondido.

“For skating, I like how it’s individual,” Calvillo said, “where it’s just me, I run my own show. But volleyball is the exact opposite. You’re part of a team. I like those two different aspects.”

The unusual cross-training has helped the Warriors’ soft-spoken co-captain with his focus on the court and ice.

“In volleyball, as a team you sometimes have to work harder and your teammates can get you motivated,” Calvillo said. “That carries over into skating. I think the discipline I’ve had in skating, that goes over into volleyball.”

Like attention to detail. Calvillo’s co-captain, senior Eric McDonald, remembers that from the beginning.

“In seventh grade when we were at tryouts at Brethren, I remember him telling me how to pass,” McDonald said. “I never played before, but I ended up making the team.”

Now McDonald is a 6-foot-3 senior who helped Brethren Christian win its first Olympic League title and was named league MVP.

Calvary Chapel had long dominated the Olympic League, appearing in the section championships in 1994-96.

But things began turning around for Brethren Christian during Calvillo’s sophomore season, when the Warriors barely missed the playoffs by finishing one game out of third place.

“It’s been real fun,” senior Steve Cross said. “This is pretty much the same team we’ve had since our sophomore year. All of our work the past year is paying off. We’ve known each other for so long, it’s cool to be going to playoffs and just playing together.”

Last season, Brethren Christian made the Division III playoffs but lost in the first round to Sun Valley Village Christian, which is the top-seeded team this season in Division IV.

Considering the Warriors’ best record ever was barely better than break even before this season, they have taken a major step forward.

“I expected us to be good and we had a good chance at winning league,” Cross said, “but I didn’t think we’d win as easily as we did.”

Said McDonald: “I knew we were going to be much better, but I didn’t expect an undefeated season so far.”

One reason behind the Warriors’ spotless record is perfect chemistry.

“We got our priorities straight,” Calvillo said. “Everyone knows what they have to do. We’ve grown as a team. We knew we had to be conditioned and be properly prepared for practice. We knew when we were coming to the gym, it was not to mess around.”

Calvillo doesn’t have time for that. His day starts at 8 a.m. when he heads down from his family’s home in Newport Coast to Aliso Viejo to work with his skating coach.

“It’s all worked out at Brethren,” Calvillo said. “They’ve let me make up classes I’ve missed and worked with me on my schedule so I can graduate.”

After two hours at the rink, Calvillo heads up to Brethren Christian’s campus in Huntington Beach. At 2:30 p.m., it’s off to the Warrior Center gymnasium in Cypress for volleyball practice.

The regimen must be working for Calvillo, who, according to Bahnsen, doesn’t have a setting error in the two playoff matches.

“That shows how good his hands are,” Bahnsen said.

It’s something his teammates also appreciate.

“He always makes great sets,” McDonald said. “Even when we make a bad pass, he can make plays out of it.”

After volleyball, Calvillo goes home to study. He is a class valedictorian who plans to major in civil engineering at UC Irvine this fall.

But Calvillo is still focused on this volleyball season.

“Definitely this will be a season to remember,” he said. “We’re graduating, we’ve done the best possible job we can and we’re undefeated so far and plan to go to the finals. That would be great.”