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Sports

Laguna Beach Faces 'Make or Break' Week in Boys Volleyball

Suffering a six-game losing streak, Breakers face Corona del Mar and Newport Harbor in home matches this week before league play starts next week.

When you’re a two-time defending state regional champion and a current reigning CIF Southern Section champion, you are held to a different standard.

When you’ve lost once in the four-year existence of the Orange Coast League and have captured four consecutive league titles, you judge yourself differently.

So when you’ve dropped your last six matches and seven of the last eight, and you have two of the biggest nonleague games of the season this week — against Corona del Mar (Tuesday), which took over your No. 1 spot in this week’s Division 2 coaches' rankings, and Newport Harbor (Thursday), the runner-up in the recent O.C. Championships — you can imagine how Laguna Beach boys volleyball coach Lance Stewart feels right about now.

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“We’ve struggled defensively so far.... We’re scrapping for balls. But a lot of that is because everybody’s playing a different position this year,” said Stewart, who is in his 11th year of his second stint as the Breakers' popular coach. “But we’re going to be tough at the end of the season.”

Laguna Beach (7-8) dropped three tough matches Saturday at the Orange County Championships. The Breakers lost to Esperanza in three games, dropping them to the silver division. They then lost to Servite, 2-1, and Orange Lutheran, 2-0; before that there were tournament losses to Corona del Mar, JSerra and San Clemente.

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A rematch against the Sea Kings and a date against Newport Harbor — both home games at 5:30 p.m. –- will be the last two before the Breakers begin league play against Estancia on March 29. It also will be the last time the Breakers will see any top-flight competition until the section's Division 2 playoffs begin in the second week of May.

Senior outside hitter Alex Burk said games like the next two are important not only for the rankings but the morale of the team — as long as they play well and win.

“It can get our confidence up,” Burke said. “It’s definitely been a building process this year, but our defense has been pretty good and we are quicker than last year. We certainly play better when our confidence is up.”

Senior Robbie McKnight was a first-team All-CIF setter last year, but this year he’s on the outside with talented junior Jack Winn taking over as setter. McKnight is desperately needed at the net by the Breakers, whose biggest deficiency this season has been with height, especially in blocking.

However, with 10 seniors on the 15-player roster, the Breakers have the experience in tight or big games, along with the volleyball lineage to know when it needs to be performing at its peak. McKnight said that while nonleague games are important when it comes to the section playoffs, so are league games, even when you’ve won 24 of 25 games in four years.

McKnight leads the team in kills with 208, or 5.8 kills per game, and Burk is next with 121 kills (3.4).

“We know it’s going to be Corona del Mar and us [in Division 2], so we need to play a lot better teams [before league play starts],” McKnight said. “But league games are really important, too, because they get can our confidence up.... Like we can beat anybody.”

Starting now, anybody will do.

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