Boys volleyball: Mesa brushed away

Tony Altobelli

LAGUNA BEACH - Costa Mesa High’s boys volleyball team saw its

competition rise and the number of uncontested kills go down in Friday’s

15-12, 15-9, 15-11 loss to host Laguna Beach.

“Obviously, this was the best team we’ve faced this season,” Mustangs

Coach Jon Carlew said of the Artists, ranked No. 7 in CIF Southern

Section Division III. “Laguna Beach did a great job of returning shots.

We hadn’t seen too much of that this season. Usually it’s been set,

spike, point over. Not tonight.”

Senior Nate Jones led the Mustangs with 19 kills, while seniors Shaun

Ferryman (11) and David Van Ngo (10) added to the attack. Junior setter

Gary Bogert had 40 assists.

But it was a case of too many mistakes and too many flat feet that proved

costly to the Mustangs (6-2, 2-1 in league).

“The difference in the match was when the rallies occurred,” Carlew said.

“We were left out of position numerous times and people weren’t in the

right places when they needed to be. It was just a case of haven’t been

there before this year. This was a great learning experience for us.”

Costa Mesa never led in game one but managed to hang in there, thanks to

the solid play of Jones and Ferryman.

Trailing, 13-9, Ferryman had a block and service winner for points,

cutting the lead to 13-11 and forcing Laguna Beach to call timeout.

An Artists’ passing error got Mesa as close as, 13-12, but an errant

Mustang return and a kill by Austin Ybarra gave Laguna Beach the win.

“Laguna Beach has played much stronger competition up to this point and

it showed late in each game,” Carlew said. “They kept their composure and

made the shots when they needed to.”

Once again, Mesa fell behind and stayed behind throughout game two. After

dropping the first five points, the Mustangs went on a 4-0 run thanks to

blocks by Van Ngo and Jones.

Both teams traded points back and forth before an Artists’ three-point

mini-run built the lead up to, 12-7.

Mesa got as close as 12-9 before the strong serving of Brian Lichterman

helped close out the game for Laguna Beach.

The Mustangs led for the first time in the match early in game three and

had a 10-8 lead following back-to-back kills by Jones.

“He really stepped it up tonight,” Carlew said. “I wish everyone else

played as good as he did.”

A plethora of Mesa mistakes enabled Laguna Beach to score some easy

points down the stretch.

“We had our opportunities, but we missed too many serves,” Carlew said.

“We had 11 missed serves for the match and that killed us.”

A long Mustang return capped off a 4-0 Laguna Beach run, giving the

Artists a 12-10 lead.

A Van Ngo kill made it 12-11, but that would be as close as the Mustangs

would get. A block by the duo of Ybarra and Peter Anderson gave the match

to Laguna Beach.

“I think we can take a positive from this,” Carlew said. “We need to

learn how to play in a long rally and I think we made some progress on

that. We hung in there with the big boys tonight, so we know we can

compete among the top programs. We just have to limit our mistakes.”