CdM regains ring

NORWALK — Former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Jerome Bettis uses his championship ring to hawk GNC products in a popular magazine ad.

Saturday afternoon, Corona del Mar High Coach Steve Conti was using his to inspire players during a volleyball match for the CIF Southern Section Division II title.

Conti pulled out the ring — which commemorates CdM’s 2005 title — from his pocket during the last timeout of the fourth game of the Sea Kings’ 25-23, 25-21, 30-32, 27-25 win over Santa Barbara at Cerritos College.

The top-seeded Sea Kings were in a close Game 4 with No. 2-seeded Santa Barbara, and they could have defeated the Dons in the third game had they not squandered a six-point lead, their largest of the entire match.

So it was time to remind the Sea Kings what they were playing for, what they missed last year when they won the first two games of the championship final, but lost the match.

Out came the ring.

The score was 26-25, and one point stood between CdM and victory.

One gander was all it took.

“He said ‘You guys go out there and get one of these right now.’ I think we were all very encouraged and very pumped up,” said outside hitter Blaine Nielsen, the UC Santa Barbara-bound senior who had 16 kills and 11 digs. Junior middle blocker Gus Ellis pounded down the final kill. He had a team-high 20 kills.

Conti’s rings don’t make many public appearances. They stay locked in his house, tucked away in a drawer.

But there were six seniors on the team and four juniors who remembered what last year’s loss to Valencia felt like, and after losing Game 3, it was something none of the Sea Kings wanted to repeat.

“Definitely flashes of last year’s loss were coming back,” Nielsen said. “That was probably one of the worst feelings I’ve ever felt in my young life, so I didn’t want any doubt that we were going to win the fourth game.”

Santa Barbara (24-3) led by as many as four points in the fourth game before CdM (33-2) came back for the tie and subsequent win. Senior Phil Bannan, who will play for UC San Diego, finished with 52 assists, three kills, four blocks and eight digs. The Dons, who featured UC Irvine-bound senior Carson Clark and UCLA-bound senior Jeremy Casebeer, fought off four match points to win the third game.

CdM junior Jeff Carlson, who stepped into the outside hitter position when Adam Smith sustained a ligament tear in his left hand, was instrumental in the Sea Kings’ semifinal win over Dos Pueblos. Carlson collected eight kills and 12 digs against the Dons, and opposite hitter Brad McCoy also had eight kills.

There were a couple of interruptions that drew the match out. Santa Barbara Coach Chad Arneson noted that CdM attempted a substitution when it was out of rotation, which is illegal, and this occupied one official at the end of Game Two. Ellis said the effect of the interruptions was minimal.

“If we’re losing, we want to get in as much time as possible between when we messed up and when we can get in there because we want to stop their momentum from going,” he said. “If we’re up, we want to get the show on the road. I think the second time, we were feeling pretty good so I think we were really frustrated with the really long break.”

A second interruption occurred when Arneson tried to put a player in the match who wasn’t on the roster. Coaches may add players to the roster and play them, but they have to give the new roster to the officials, which Arneson failed to do. This resulted in another conference at the scorer’s table, while the two teams stood on the court.

The Sea Kings, the Pacific Coast League champions, didn’t care how long it took to win, they just wanted to erase the memory of last year’s final.

“I can’t even tell you how much better I feel right now,” Ellis said. “Last year, it stuck with me for the whole summer, until this moment, and right now I know I’m going to be able to look back and see this red [patch], and be so happy about it for the rest of the year.”

SORAYA NADIA McDONALD may be reached at (714) 966-4613 or [email protected].