first set

Marymount girls volleyball team is peaking at the right time — and that could mean trouble for opponents.

The Sailors had everything working for them in a 25-13, 25-17, 25-15 sweep of visiting Mira Costa in the Southern Section Division 1 quarterfinals on Tuesday night, showing no signs of rust after a first-round bye in the 12-team bracket.

“We couldn’t have been more prepared,” Washington-bound senior hitter Sammy Destler said. “Our energy got us to the finish line. We were on fire. That’s the best we’ve played all season.”

Destler entered the match two kills shy of 1,000 for her career and it didn’t take long for her to reach the milestone, achieving it on a strike to the right side that gave Marymount a 12-6 lead in the first set.

“I had no clue until they announced it, but it feels good,” said Destler, one of seven Sailors who finished with at least five kills. “We’re very familiar with them, they have Audrey [Flanagan] and Simone [Roslon] and they’re always tough but tonight was about everything we did on our side.”

The fifth-seeded Mustangs (24-10), who shared the Bay League crown with No. 2 Redondo Union despite dropping their first league match since 2019, had pushed Marymount to five sets in a nonleague match in September, but this time they could not handle the Sailors’ balanced attack.

Marymount’s serving kept Mira Costa out of system all match. In the first set alone the Sailors served seven aces, including three in a row by Southern Methodist-bound middle blocker Elle Vandeweghe, that put her team up 20-9. She and Destler combined for a stuff block on set point.

Destler opened the second set with another ace, then Frankie Jones ended it with a kill. Destler and Makenna Barnes, a Northwestern commit, each had eight kills apiece while Vandeweghe and the Brown-bound Jones each added six.

Flanagan, a Wisconsin commit, paced the Mustangs with eight kills and got a hug afterwards from Destler, one of her best friends.

Marymount’s Makenna Barnes, right, goes on the attack against Mira Costa blockers Liliana Swanson, left, and Milly McGee, center, during Marymount’s victory in the Southern Section Division 1 quarterfinals on Tuesday.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

“We’ve played so many more matches than other teams,” Marymount coach Cari Klein said. “I didn’t want it, but I think we needed those extra few days rest because of the intensity of our schedule.”

The fourth-seeded Sailors (37-5) advanced to the semifinals to face top-seeded Sierra Canyon (37-3) on Saturday for the fourth time this season. The Sailors won the first meeting, 21-25, 25-15, 25-12 in the finals of the Durango Fall Classic in Las Vegas. The Trailblazers rebounded to take a pair of Mission League meetings over a span of eight days.

Klein, who is hoping to pilot the Sailors to their 11th section title in her 28th season, was so locked in to the task at hand Tuesday that she did not look at the CIF website to see if her team had won the coin flip for the next round: “Please say it’s here!”

Her wish was not granted, as Marymount will have to travel to Chatsworth, where it dropped a five-set thriller on Sept. 29, but Destler is confident they can win on any court.

“If we play like we this, there’s no stopping us,” she said.

NEW YORK — Carlos Alcaraz reasserted his superiority over Jannik Sinner with a 6-2, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 victory Sunday in the U.S. Open final — the third Grand Slam tournament in a row where these elite, young rivals met to decide the champion — for his second trophy at Flushing Meadows and sixth overall at a major.

President Trump sat in a sponsor’s suite in Arthur Ashe Stadium and received a mix of cheers and boos when he offered a wave beforehand and again when he was shown on videoboards after the first set. The match’s start was delayed by about a half-hour because thousands of fans were still outside in line, trying to get through the extra security measures in place because of the presence of a sitting president at the tournament for the first time since Bill Clinton in 2000.

Jannik Sinner reacts while losing to Carlos Alcaraz during the U.S. Open men’s singles final Sunday in New York.

(Seth Wenig / Associated Press)

Perhaps the extra wait got to the No. 1-seeded Sinner, who was the defending champion. Right from the beginning, under a closed roof because of rain earlier in the day, No. 2 Alcaraz was better as he sought to reverse the result from when they met at the All England Club less than two months ago.

He did just that, putting his leads over Sinner at 10-5 in their head-to-head series, 6-4 in major trophies, and 2-1 in U.S. Open championships. Plus, this win allowed Alcaraz, a 22-year-old from Spain, to take away the No. 1 ranking from Sinner, a 24-year-old from Italy.

These two guys are so, so much better than the rest of men’s tennis at the moment.

They have combined to collect the past eight Slam trophies in a row, and 10 of 13. Novak Djokovic, whom Alcaraz eliminated in Friday’s semifinals, took the other three in that span.

Carlos Alcaraz, of Spain, celebrates after defeating Jannik Sinner, of Italy, in the U.S. Open men’s singles final Sunday in New York.

(Kirsty Wigglesworth / Associated Press)

Sunday’s showdown represented the first time in tennis history that the same two men played each other in three consecutive Slam finals within a single season.

This hard-court matchup followed Alcaraz’s victory over Sinner after erasing a trio of match points on the French Open’s red clay in June, and Sinner’s victory over Alcaraz on Wimbledon’s grass in July.

Both Sinner, who had won his past 27 hard-court matches at majors, and Alcaraz offered glimpses of why they are so good, although it was rare that both were at their best simultaneously on this occasion.

Alcaraz was elite in the first, third and fourth sets, Sinner’s top efforts arrived in the second.

In sum, Alcaraz was better and for longer, ending up with twice as many winners, 42-21.

Since the start of the 2024 U.S. Open, Sinner had won 33 of 34 matches at the majors and Sunday was his fifth straight final at those events. The loss? To Alcaraz at Roland-Garros.

Indeed, over the last two seasons, Sinner is now 1-7 against Alcaraz and 109-4 against everyone else.

Alcaraz, meanwhile, has won 37 of 38 contests since May. The loss? To Sinner at the All England Club — also Alcaraz’s lone defeat in a Slam final.

In 2025, Alcaraz now has more tournament titles (a tour-leading seven) than losses (his record is 61-6, also the best in men’s tennis).

During his defeat in Wimbledon’s final, Alcaraz was caught by a camera telling his team about Sinner in Spanish: “From the back of the court, he’s much better than me.”

So perhaps that’s why Alcaraz was aggressive Sunday with his sledgehammer of a forehand — and on-target too. Whenever even the smallest opening presented itself, Alcaraz tried to barge on through with that shot, going big early in points, which worked, either for an outright winner or forcing mistakes from Sinner.

Sinner had dropped a total of just one service game in his three matches leading into the final, but he did deal with an abdominal muscle issue in his semifinal Friday. Sinner and his coach said it was nothing serious, which might be right, but Alcaraz broke right away Sunday and five times in all.

To counteract the forehand effectiveness, Sinner made a tactical switch, going increasingly after Alcaraz’s backhand when possible. That both limited Alcaraz’s opportunities to strike a point-ending forehand and drew additional mistakes off the other wing.

Paid off for Sinner. Briefly.

In the first set and third, Alcaraz’s ratios were 11 winners to two unforced errors. Truly remarkable. In the second, those numbers swung the other way: five winners, 11 unforced errors.

An hour and 20 minutes in, it was a set apiece, after Alcaraz ceded one for the first time all tournament, allowing Neale Fraser to retain his distinction as the most recent man to win every set he played at the event — all the way back in 1960.

As Sinner worked his way into things, he would celebrate just about every point he gathered by looking at the corner of the stands where his two coaches and others, including Olympic champion ski racer Lindsey Vonn, were seated and pumped his right fist.

Ah, but it was Alcaraz who seemed to have more of the ticket-buyers on his side.

Fendrich writes for the Associated Press.