Huntington Beach tunes up for final as Loyola plays through tragedy

It all went as it was supposed to go, another sweep to gird the resolve ahead of a top-tier boys’ volleyball final — a No. 1-versus-No. 2 showdown, thanks to what was occurring up the coast — with a shot at a CIF Southern Section championship for the first time in a decade.

Everyone wished it could have been otherwise.

Huntington Beach, ranked second in the state and third in the nation, marched into Friday night’s Division 1 title game at Cerritos College against top-ranked Mira Costa by making easy work of defending champion Los Angeles Loyola.

The 25-15, 25-21, 25-21 home triumph last Friday evening didn’t mean a whole lot — the Oilers had clinched Pool B’s berth with Tuesday’s sweep of Redondo Union, and Loyola was going to miss the regional tournament regardless — except for their aspirations and, more vitally, the Cubs’ desperation.

Loyola (27-7) arrived a broken team, reeling from the May 4 death of its team manager. Braun Levi, a University of Virginia-bound senior and Loyola tennis star, died early that morning after an allegedly impaired driver struck him as he walked across Sepulveda Boulevard in Manhattan Beach. Volleyball isn’t the priority right now.

“They’ve checked out. They’re not here,” Loyola head coach Michael Boehle said before the game. “These guys have been hit with a lot. They got hit with my diagnosis of cancer early on [this season]. They got nailed with fires [in January]. And then they got nailed with the teammate’s death. And they just aren’t there.

“They’re just not mentally there, you know? They’re drained.”

The Cubs hadn’t practiced all week, and Boehle considered forfeiting their final two pool games, but “they wanted to play, and I love the fact that they gave it a shot.”

Loyola, seeded third and aiming for a third successive CIF State Southern California Regional title, had opened Pool B play by, Boehle said, “overlook[ing]” Redondo, which was “flawless” and was “not going to get beat that night.” Levi, whose family had relocated to Manhattan Beach after their home was destroyed in the Palisades fire, was killed three nights later. The close-knit Loyola community — the all-boys institution is the most prominent Catholic high school in Los Angeles — was devastated.

“There really isn’t any words,” said Boehle, who completed his 29th campaign as head coach. “I tried to navigate this as best I can. I just didn’t have any answers for it. ... It’s important that these guys stay together, as a group, as a brotherhood. That’s what we’ve been telling them all week: ‘This is your family. These are your brothers.’”

So they went out together Tuesday night against sixth-seeded Newport Harbor and were listless in a four-set defeat.

“People are like, ‘Hey, you’re not in the finals this year,’” said Boehle, who has won seven section titles in 12 title-game appearances since 2003. “And I’m like, ‘It’s OK.’ Like, ‘We’ve got bigger things to worry about than being in the finals.’”

Friday night’s finale was a chance for the Cubs to honor Levi. A moment of silence started the encounter, and Boehle made certain everybody got court time “so they can all say we did it for Braun.”

“The outcome doesn’t matter,” he said.

The game was to be played Saturday, but Loyola held a “celebration of life” for Levi that evening, and Huntington Beach head coach Craig Pazanti “told Mike whenever he wanted to play, whatever he wanted to do, we were going to be OK with it.”

“I think that’s the great thing about the volleyball community,” Pazanti said. “We can come together when we have stuff like this. As much as we want to beat each other and are at each other’s throats sometimes, you never want to see anybody have to go through this situation. I’ve been through it, as a coach a long time ago, when I first started coaching, and I know how devastating it can be to the team and the community.”

The outcome was expected. Huntington Beach (34-3) has one of its best teams since winning section and regional championships in 2013, 2014 and 2015, had beaten Loyola twice, 3-0 the second time, and came in “respecting our opponents by playing our hearts out,” senior libero Aiden Atencio called it.

“We want to play one way,” he said. “We wanted to come out and win, 3-0. Even though this game didn’t matter and we were clinched, we wanted to come out of a victory going into the finals.”

The Oilers were dominant, using their serve-and-pass game and strong performances at the net from sophomore outside hitter Logan Hutnick (14 kills, two blocks) and senior middle blocker Nick Ganier Jr. (10 kills) to lead start to finish in the first set, take a sizable lead in the second, and pull away midway through the third.

Pazanti went deeper down his bench than usual, seeing it as “a great opportunity for a lot of guys to get on the floor who might not get on the floor.” Starting outside hitter Colin Choi and opposite Ben Arguello, both juniors, had most of the night off.

The Oilers are short on stars — only setter Kai Gan, headed to Harvard, is set to play Division I in college — but big on the collective. Choi and Arguello pounce on the chances outside, with Ganier and senior Justin Bulsom but manning the middle, and Gan (“one of the best setters in CIF,” Pazanti says) — and Atencio, a four-year starter, keeping things moving. Hutnick, one of the best hitters in the 2027 class, and sophomore Easton Ebmeyer, just back from an ankle injury that’s sidelined him all season, provide attacking depth.

It’s looked like their best shot at the program’s sixth CIF title since the 2013-15 reign, except for the presence of Mira Costa (31-2). The Mustangs, who lost to Loyola in last year’s final, are a monster team.

“We’re going to go get our slingshot, and we’re going to give it our best effort,” Pazanti said. “They’re a big, physical team. We’re not going to change. We’re going to play our game. We’re going to go out there and just do the best we can do. What we’ve been doing has been pretty successful.”

The teams met back in February, at the Redondo Classic, with Huntington Beach, without Choi, dropping a 25-23, 25-23 decision. The Mustangs’ only losses were in the Best of the West tournament final to Loyola (after the Cubs topped Huntington Beach in the semifinals) in early March and against national No. 2 Marist — two days after sweeping the Chicago school on their home court — at the Karch Kiraly Tournament of Champions in Santa Barbara in early April. Marist beat Huntington Beach the same day.

“[Mira Costa has] been pretty dominant the whole year ...,” Gan said. “They’re huge guys. They work really hard, and they’re just all-around, really big competitors. Coming into it, you have to know you have nothing to lose. Us beating them would be truly a big accomplishment.”

Mira Costa has won the last six meetings, two of them in Division 1 playoff games — 3-0 in a 2019 quarterfinal and 3-2 in 2023 pool play. The Oilers won semifinal showdowns en route to their 2013 and 2015 section titles.

Pazanti, who also won a 2021 Division II regional title, sees similarities between Mira Costa and his title teams that supplied the bulk of a 2012-16 winning streak that reached 121 games.

“[Our 2013-15 teams were] a different breed,” he said. “You had the guy who started in the last two Olympics [T.J. DeFalco]. You have two guys who barely didn’t make that cut in the Olympics. You got guys playing professionally overseas. We had 12 Division I players on that team.

“You look at the [Mira] Costa roster, and that’s kind of what they have. I don’t know if they have any Olympians, but they’ve got 11, 12 guys that are going to go play Division I volleyball.”

Atencio says it “all comes down to what we do on our side.”

“I think the serve and pass game is going to be crucial, but also the blocking,” he said. “They’re a very big, physical team, and I think that we have the blocks to handle that, the defense to scramble, and so we just need to have that grit and show out and execute.”

Loyola keeps working through the pain.

“[I feel for] the family,” Boehle said. “As a parent, I can’t imagine what they’re going through. I’ve got four kids. Someone said it best at school: As a parent, I want to be buried before I have to bury my own child. My heart goes out to them.”

Boehle has one last task. Levi’s father, Dan, emailed the coach after the Palisades fire, sent him a photo of Braun wearing his volleyball championship ring, except it was melted.

“I ordered him a new ring, to present to him this year at the end of our banquet,” he said. “And I’m not going to be able to do that. I still get goosebumps. It breaks my heart. You just never know.

“That’s the one thing that I’m really crushed by, that I’m not going to be able to hand him that. But ‘you earned this.’ I’ve got to give it to his mom and dad.”