League champs

CORONA DEL MAR — Two balloons, a No. 1 and No. 8, flew next to each other in the Corona del Mar High gym.

The numbers together represented the age one of the players in the girls’ volleyball match turned on Thursday.

The home fans wished Madie Smith “Happy Birthday” at the right time. They sang the song loudly as the senior closed out the Sea Kings’ perfect Pacific Coast League season with three straight serves.

The best gift of the night for Smith was seeing CdM celebrate the outright league championship at home. The Sea Kings swept Beckman, 25-16, 25-17, 25-16, making it four straight years CdM has claimed the outright league crown.

Smith has been setting the tempo since the first one.

Smith finished with 34 assists, 11 digs, three kills, one service ace and one block. At the end, she held a gift box, but it wasn’t as valuable to her as the 10th league victory this year.

“Perfectly,” Smith said of how her birthday turned out after the Sea Kings improved to 22-4, 10-0 in league.

“We were all so excited, the last league game. The last [regular-season match at home] we wanted to finish on good terms. No one was nervous. Everyone was ready to go.”

The only thing stopping the Sea Kings was the pre-match festivities.

The start time was delayed by five minutes after Smith and Sydney Brombal, Amanda Nickel, Sarah Folks and Bryn Hastings were honored as seniors. Each player received flowers and they gave flowers to Beckman’s seniors.

A nice gesture by the No. 2-ranked Sea Kings in the CIF Southern Section Division II-AA poll. That’s all the No. 5-ranked Patriots (23-7, 8-2) left the gym with, flowers, no share of the league title.

The Patriots threatened the Sea Kings’ outright title hopes last year, losing in five games in the league finale at CdM. They proved to be no match this year.

Things got so frustrating for Beckman that its coach, Darin McBain, sarcastically chided the referee closest to the bench.

“Every ball that they hit has been in, how weird,” McBain said after Brombal dropped in a shot near the end line in the third game.

Brombal was on her way to a productive night. The outside hitter finished with eight kills, seven digs and an ace.

Game 3 proved to be the most competitive. Eight times the score was tied. Not for a minute did Coach Darryl Gan expect his Sea Kings to sweep Beckman.

Three of the previous four matches between CdM and Beckman went a full five games. To make matters worse, Gan said several of his players have been ill, including co-coach Jim Downey, who missed his second match due to the cold.

The Sea Kings still ran away after being tied at 12-12. CdM went on an 8-2 run after getting kills from Nickel, Hailey Senske and Morgan Boukather, who led the team with a dozen kills.

Next for the Sea Kings is the regular-season finale, the Battle of the Bay today at rival Newport Harbor at 6 p.m.

Smith wants to party again. A victory against the No 2-ranked team in Division I-AA is more than an acceptable reason for Smith to celebrate a day after her birthday.

“We’ve never beat them and we’ve always wanted to [during my four years],” Smith said. “We’re also excited since it’s a breast cancer fundraiser. We’re going to have pink jerseys.

“It would be really, really nice if we could win Battle of the Bay senior year.”