Connor Koski lifts El Camino Real to City Section Open Division boys' volleyball title
It was fitting Connor Koski clinched El Camino Real's championship with a block on match point in Saturday night's City Section Open Division boys volleyball final at Birmingham High in Lake Balboa.
'I timed my jump and I thought it was going out but I guess it hit [an opposing player's] foot on the way down,' said an exuberant Koski, who moved from middle blocker to opposite hitter before the playoffs. 'I asked [coach Alyssa Lee] to switch me and it worked.'
El Camino Real's triumph culminated in a 25-21, 25-20, 20-25, 25-21 victory over top-seeded Venice, but the title was four years in the making. Eleven of the Royals' 12 players are seniors.
'We're all friends, we all trust each other and it's a dream come true to win a championship in one of our last matches together,' said Tyler Lee, who paced the squad with 14 kills. 'We've lost our share of five setters, so we wanted to end this thing in four.'
Koski, El Camino Real's lone junior, had eight kills, including one to end the second set. Dev Vunnam and Christian Romero also each had eight kills, Jackson Riepe had seven and Nicolas Gerola served four aces, the first of which gave El Camino Real the first set.
The third-seeded Royals (27-13) got hot at the right time and avenged a pair of West Valley League losses to Chatsworth by ending the Chancellors' bid for a third straight Open title with a shocking 25-23, 25-16, 25-22 semifinal upset Tuesday.
'I've known this group since their freshman year and I've push them hard in practice to prepare them for those situations,' said Lee, who understands the intensity of every match in the West Valley League, having played libero for Granada Hills before graduating in 2009. 'The physical talent is there but the mental training is so important. You have to stay focused and can't let up.'
Lee coached the boys to the Division I title in 2016 (the Open Division debuted in 2018) and guided the girls to the Open championship in 2023. She also has coached the girls to two beach volleyball crowns.
'The first two times we played Chatsworth I just let the boys play but I game-planned a lot for the semifinals,' Lee said. 'We needed a big guy on the right like Connor to block and get some kills.'
Trailing by four points early in the third set and in danger of being swept, the Gondoliers (36-6) used an 8-0 run to surge into the lead and finished it on Nathan Hoggatt's emphatic kill. Noah Smith had 10 kills for Venice, last year's Division I champion.
Something had to give as Venice entered on an 11-match winning streak dating back to April 21 (dropping only one set in the process) while El Camino Real had won five consecutive matches and 15 straight sets since April 9.
In Saturday's Division II final, hitter Izac Garcia helped Valley Academy of Arts and Sciences take home its first City title after a 20-25, 25-22, 25-21, 25-15 triumph over Mendez, which was seeking its first crown since back-to-back Division III championships in 2021-22.
Hamilton, last year's Division V champion, moved up to Division IV and beat Port of LA for the championship. In Division V, Wilson downed Harbor Teacher for its first-ever title.
On the same floor Friday, top-seeded Taft captured its seventh section crown, sixth in Division I and first since 2015 with its 25-10, 25-20, 25-17 sweep of No. 2 Carson. Arman Mercado, who took over the girls' program in 2000 and the boys two years later, coached the girls to their first Open Division title in the fall and has guided the Toreadors to 22 finals appearances.
East Valley swept Maywood CES for the Division III title — the Falcons' first in boys volleyball.
Also on Friday, Mira Costa outlasted Huntington Beach in five sets in a South Bay showdown for the Southern Section Division 1 championship at Cerritos College. The top-seeded Mustangs prevailed, 25-19, 22-25, 25-19, 29-31, 15-11, behind 25 kills from Grayson Bradford — the last from the right side to end the match.
Mateo Fuerbringer added 17 kills for Mira Costa, which fell in three sets to Loyola in the finals last spring. Logan Hutnick led the charge for the second-seeded Oilers, who staved off four championship points in a wild fourth set. It was the Mustangs' ninth section title and first since 2021.
Mater Dei rallied to beat Peninsula 20-25, 25-17, 25-13, 25-19 in Division 2.
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CNBC
a day ago
- CNBC
CNBC Sport: Sports may be getting more expensive, but not less accessible
A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman, which brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. Sports journalist Joon Lee wrote a New York Times opinion column this week about how the evolution of the media landscape has fractured sports fandom as it's become increasingly expensive to watch games on TV. If you haven't read the piece, titled "$4,785. That's how much it costs to be a sports fan now," the crux is as follows: "For most of my life, sports was one of the most accessible forms of entertainment in America," Lee writes. "You turned on the TV, flipped to the game and cheered or booed — with your family, your neighborhood, your city. Being a fan was simple. It was community. This community is dying, because some of its shared moments are disappearing." The column is worth reading. Fox Sports executive Michael Mulvihill tweeted it's "the most important piece written about the sports business this year." I guess now's a good time to let you know I don't agree with most of it. Lee's central thesis is that live sports have become less accessible and more expensive. As an in-person live event, I have no argument. The data is pretty straightforward: Ticket prices just keep getting more expensive. Taking a family of five to a game is simply not the family-friendly activity it once was. My problem with the piece is the idea that sports on TV used to be accessible and now aren't. Cable TV still exists. About 65 million U.S. households still subscribe to a bundle of linear TV channels, according to research firm MoffettNathanson. Granted, that's a lot lower than the 100 million that subscribed about 12 years ago. But Lee's thesis is that people who once watched sports on TV aren't watching anymore because the cost is too high. While it's true that tens of millions of American families have cut the cord on cable, many that have left aren't sports fans. Sports have always been the most expensive part of the cable bundle. ESPN costs about 10 to 20 times more than most cable networks. The problem was, in the olden times before 2010, there weren't many appealing at-home entertainment options beyond cable TV. So, non-sports fans took it on the chin and paid the $100 a month or so for cable TV. Now, with Netflix and Disney+ and the plethora of streaming options, they don't have to anymore. For the cost conscious, sports were actually far less accessible decades ago, when families' options were either cable TV or free broadcast. With ESPN about to debut its direct-to-consumer all-in service this fall, consumers that don't have cable can mix and match to get the sports they want without being forced to buy a bundle. The "a-la-carte" dream has finally arrived. Will some casual fans who used to flip on a game at random drop off? Sure. But I don't think those people really defined the community that Lee's talking about. TV ratings for marquee sporting events – the type that bring communities together – actually don't look all that different from 15 years ago, despite the massive loss in cable TV subscribers. The Super Bowl has set all-time highs for TV viewership in back-to-back years. Ratings for the Stanley Cup the past three years look pretty similar to 15 years ago – in fact, they're a little higher. Recent NBA Finals ratings look pretty similar to what they looked like from 2003-2010. Last year's MLB World Series had the highest TV ratings in seven years . Here's Lee: I subscribe to nearly every service there is with live sports — YouTube TV, NBA League Pass, NFL Sunday Ticket, Peacock, Apple TV+, Max, Amazon Prime, Paramount — for $2,634 a year. But to watch the Boston Red Sox play the New York Yankees earlier this month, I would have had to fork over an additional $19.99 a month for some obscure baseball-focused service that has that slice of one of the most iconic rivalries in America's national pastime….Dozens if not hundreds of games that make up America's national pastimes are being sliced and diced and sold off to the highest bidder — be that a cable giant, or a streaming upstart, or a regional sports network or a subscription app. Games jump from one service to another with so little notice or apparent logic that even some of the biggest superfans struggle to track what's available where. It's true that if you want to watch every possible game of every major sport, you'll be paying up the wazoo. But there simply aren't many people like Lee who are doing this. Again, if you want to watch most sports, pay for cable (or YouTube TV) and Amazon Prime – a service about 200 million Americans already have. Many streaming services now come baked in with a cable subscription, so you may not even have to pay extra for Peacock or Paramount+. If you're a young person who doesn't pay for cable, most of the marquee sporting events are free over the air on NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox, and soon you can pay $29.99 per month for ESPN, with Disney+ and Hulu free for a year. Maybe throw in Peacock for $7.99 per month and Max for $9.99 for some college football, NBA games next season, golf, tennis, NASCAR and March Madness. You'll be extremely connected to most major sports, and you'll pay less than traditional cable. NFL Sunday Ticket, NBA League Pass, – these services were never part of the fabric of America. Even at the local level, while others have made the argument that a fractured TV environment has led to lower ratings this year , they're ignoring the fact that bad teams have always had worse ratings. If your team is doing great, guess what? Your regional sports network ratings are usually great too. Lee again: The leagues could have devised ways to pocket streamers' cash while preserving their fandoms. Instead, they pursued the biggest immediate payouts by slicing up games and selling marquee matchups across platforms….The N.F.L. has been slower to move, as it continues to rake in tens of millions by airing its games on traditional broadcast networks. But as more fans move to streaming, it, too, is also starting to slowly carve up its schedule across an expanding slate of platforms. What is true — particularly for basketball and baseball — is that this shift has been almost universally disastrous not only for fans but also for teams in smaller markets that relied on revenue-sharing models. As the old way of doing business fell away, the rich teams were getting richer while the rest were threatened with being left behind. Leagues certainly have made more money by slicing TV rights to include streamers like Amazon, Apple and Netflix. But there's a good argument that moving some games to streaming embraces the future and is fan-friendly. The NFL actually hasn't been slower to move to embrace streamers – it was first to move. The NFL was the first major American sports league to have an exclusive game package owned by a streaming service – Amazon Prime Video. That deal was signed in 2021 for about $1 billion per season. Lee's point about the shift to streaming being "universally disastrous" for smaller markets has to do with the crumbling of the RSN model. But most teams make more money from national media rights deals than their local deals. The NBA Finals is currently the Indiana Pacers vs. the Oklahoma City Thunder – two small market teams. And MLB's small market problems have to do more with billionaire owners simply not spending (because there's no salary floor) more than the RSN transition. Lee ends his piece talking about how private equity is destroying teams by valuing returns over prestige, but private equity firms typically own minority stakes in teams, not majority stakes. While Boston sports fans (like Lee) are quick to point to Fenway Sports Group's downsizing of the Red Sox, there's little evidence that private equity has dramatically changed the way teams are run, because most funds' stakes don't come with any decision-making power. Private equity isn't there to harvest assets for cash, it's there because wealthy families wanted some liquidity out of their teams that are skyrocketing in value. I simply don't buy the somewhat common narrative that the streaming era is much less consumer friendly than the cable era. Loyal readers know I'm a big San Francisco 49ers fan. In the 1990s, I literally could not watch most 49ers games on the East Coast. I used to watch ESPN's "NFL Primetime" at 7:40 p.m. ET to see a freshly cut highlight package to find out if they won. Today, if you want to watch a game, you can find a way to do so, and you can watch on your phone or your tablet or your TV. Yes, the cost of all content keeps rising – and it's definitely more confusing to keep all the options straight – but sports are actually more available than ever before. On the record With U.S. Open winner J.J. Spaun ... I chatted with the man of the hour in the sports world, U.S. Open winner J.J. Spaun , after his thrilling victory at Oakmont on Sunday. While I, of course, asked Spaun about his 3 a.m. run to CVS to get medicine for his sick daughter the night before his final round, I was really interested in hearing what Spaun thought of the PGA Tour's new rules to limit the number of players in a starting field to increase pace of play and strengthen the overall quality of competitors. The new changes go into effect for the 2026 season. They include: Only 20 PGA Tour cards will be awarded to Korn Ferry Tour graduates, down from 30 Standard tournament fields will be reduced to 144 players from 156 The Players Championship will shrink from 144 players to 120 Spaun is one of those Korn Ferry Tour graduates. He also played on the Canadian Tour. His experience – from qualifier to Major winner – speaks to how getting an opportunity on the PGA Tour can be the difference between making millions of dollars playing golf and barely making a liveable salary. He explained his mixed feelings about the new rules: "It's maybe disappointing that the line is so thin on the PGA Tour between the 125th guy to the top 10," Spaun told me. "I was that guy the last three years, kind of grinding just inside the top 100. So that goes to show that any player on the PGA Tour can turn things around, or things can happen so quickly and end up having the success that I've had this season. So I think overall, it's a great product. 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NBC Sports
2 days ago
- NBC Sports
Vanderbilt ready to keep investing in football after historic season and House settlement
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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
AEW CEO Tony Khan: The breakup of Warner Bros. Discovery won't affect our business
The looming breakup of struggling TV player Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) won't bodyslam All Elite Wrestling's (AEW) business, says CEO Tony Khan. "We have great relationships with everybody at the top, both on global networks and streaming and studios," Khan told Yahoo Finance at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on Tuesday (watch above). "Mr. Zaslav [CEO David Zaslav] himself put our deal together. Gunnar [CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels], who will be running global networks, also was very involved in our deal." Warner Bros. Discovery said this month it will split up amid the shift to streaming that's financially hammering its legacy TV assets. The company joins rival Comcast (CMCSA) in separating TV operations from streaming assets. Last October, AEW and Warner Bros. Discovery signed a multiyear media rights deal for a reported $185 million annually. The wrestling league's two weekly shows, 'Dynamite' and 'Collision,' air on Warner Bros. Discovery's TBS and TNT networks. As part of the new deal, AEW's programming began streaming on Max for US subscribers in January. AEW was launched in 2019 by Tony Khan, a longtime wrestling fan, and his father, Shad Khan. The promotion represented the first credible rival to the WWE since WCW folded in 2001. Shad and Tony Khan are co-owners of the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars and Premier League soccer team Fulham FC. AEW debuted with an impressive roster of talent, led at the time by former WWE star Cody Rhodes. While Rhodes has since returned to the WWE, the league has maintained a roster of top talent, including former WWE stars Jon Moxley and Bryan Danielson. Besides the big media breakups, the operating landscape for AEW is ever-shifting. In September 2023, Endeavor completed a $21 billion merger between WWE and UFC, forming TKO Group (TKO). Netflix (NFLX) began exclusively streaming WWE's flagship Raw show in January as part of a $5 billion, 10-year rights deal. Speculation has since surfaced that TKO Group may look to unload WWE. Meanwhile, the competition for eyeballs has never been fiercer as Gen Z spends outsized time on platforms such as YouTube and Spotify. "I think they [linear TV networks] still have a strong life. I just don't know how long it is," former BET CEO Debra Lee told Yahoo Finance at Cannes Lions about legacy media. Lee is currently a board member at Warner Bros. Discovery. "The viewing audience is still there," Lee added. "You know, you look at channels like BET or TNT or Discovery, so the audiences are still there. Not everybody wants to be on streaming." Read more from Yahoo Finance's coverage of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity Time CEO on embracing AI: It's better to have a seat at the table X CEO Linda Yaccarino rejects claims of advertiser pressure, touts X Money, other progress under Musk Marriott CEO on summer travel demand: We haven't seen any softness Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
