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Call them the Geek Squad, the Surfer Dudes or the Genius Squad from Redondo Union High.

In an unprecedented achievement, three starters for the Sea Hawks’ 13-2 volleyball team — Tommy Spalding, Vaughan Flaherty and Carter Mirabal — are headed to MIT this fall.

Their final assignment in Advanced Placement Physics 2 should be figuring out the astronomical odds of how three best friends from the same volleyball team could be admitted to one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

“There’s no way,” was the reaction of Mirabal’s father when he heard the news.

“It’s crazy,” coach Kevin Norman said.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple hanging out in a garage. Who knows what inventions, ideas or technological feats will be imagined in gyms or on surfboards as these three Southern California teenagers unleash their brain power and love for having fun on the East Coast.

“Probably twice a week, I’ll call him, ‘Yo, I have this idea,’” Spalding said of his conversations with Mirabal. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, we usually don’t do anything about it. But it’s throwing ideas out there and hopefully one is going to stick.”

One Spalding idea: “When I was driving home from Joshua Tree, I was stuck in traffic. I was like, ‘Dude, what if we made a Google Maps type of app that utilized AI and had a camera in your car that analyzed the road, tells you what lane to be in to go the fastest and also be able to look at the traffic lights and tell you if this left arrow is red, then go straight, turn left at the next street.”

Elon Musk, beware.

MIT-bound Redondo Union volleyball players Tommy Spalding, left, Vaughan Flaherty and Carter Mirabal.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

They’ve formed a band, “Ratiohead,” a parody of the English rock band Radiohead, with lyrics from math. They’re preparing for the battle of the bands. Spalding is the vocalist, Maribal is on keyboard and Flaherty, the 6-foot-5 redhead, plays guitar.

“We’re looking for a drummer,” Spalding said.

Spalding has a 4.65 GPA and 1490 SAT score. Flaherty is at 4.4 and 1560. Mirabal is at 4.4 and 1510. Spalding said his hardest class was AP European history. Mirabal chose honors chemistry. Each received one B in four years of high school. Flaherty has received multiple Bs and said, “I think it goes to show you that you don’t have to be perfect to get into these schools if you have the potential and you’re willing to work hard and be a good fit.”

Flaherty is so witty he might be able to do a comedy routine, with Spalding serving as his wing man.

“Someone might have messed up, but I’m not going to tell them,” Flaherty said of the threesome earning a spot in the MIT class of 2030.

“Maybe it was chemistry,” Spalding quipped.

If they can make a movie, “The Social Network,” about the invention of Facebook. and a TV series, “Big Bang Theory,” about smart geeks, just wait until someone figures out the entertainment value following around this threesome.

Spalding has all the attributes of a future entrepreneur and loves tinkering with cars. He sent a two-minute video to MIT as part of his application process that showed himself and his father, Michael, turning a 2002 yellow school bus into an RV.

Mirabal has his own YouTube channel, “Carter’s Stuff Review.” He wants to be a mechanical engineer and explore the business side. Flaherty would be happy sending rockets and satellites into space while living near the beach.

All three hang out at the beach, either playing volleyball or surfing. Spalding brought his grandfather’s ping-pong table to the volleyball room at school for more fun. Cornhole is another game they play.

None set out at the beginning of high school seeking a path that leads to MIT, which accepts only about five students for every 100 applicants. “We weren’t taking the classes because we want to go to MIT,” Spalding said. “We just enjoy the subjects.”

There are smart genes in their families. Spalding’s parents are both educators, one an AP physics teacher at Peninsula High, the other a middle school vice principal. Mirabal’s father is an accountant. Flaherty’s father owns two Handel’s ice cream stores (everyone wants to hang out with Flaherty on a hot day).

Each has a story to tell about how they learned of being accepted to MIT.

Mirabal was playing volleyball in his backyard on Dec. 15 with teammates. He was going to wait until his friends left to check the email for fear of rejection. Instead, with them huddled around, he opened the email and everyone started screaming, “Yo!”

Spalding was with Mirabal and headed home to share the moment with his parents when he received a text from the MIT volleyball coach walking out the door congratulating him. “Welcome to the MIT family,” it read.

Flaherty had to wait until March 14 — Pi Day — to see if he was going to make it three for three.

He was driving home from Joshua Tree national park with his girlfriend and Tommy’s girlfriend in the car. The traffic was so bad it came to a standstill so he checked his cellphone.

“I opened it up. I saw the confetti but didn’t realize what it meant until I got a couple lines down,” he said. “The first reaction was disbelief because I thought there was no chance after these two got in.”

In fact, Flaherty said the person doing the MIT interview admitted later, “I’m not going to lie. I thought that was the killer for your application.”

They’ll be playing NCAA Division III volleyball. Mirabal and Spalding will be roommates. “Vaughan will room with someone else because he said he’d be too comfortable with us and be a bad roommate,” Spalding said.

So are they really OK leaving Southern California?

“I wouldn’t say OK with it,” Spalding said.

“It is a sacrifice,” Mirabal said.

Just know the beach will always draw them back to sunny Southern California as the three sat in the Redondo Union volleyball locker room wearing shorts, sandals and their MIT shirts.

“As much as we study, I feel at the end of the day we want to have fun,” Spalding said.

They’re not expecting to re-create “Animal House” at MIT, but let’s see what happens when three surfer dudes from the same high school in California show up with open minds and lots of ideas to explore.

March 23 (UPI) — An Air Canada regional jet with nearly 80 people onboard collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport, prompting federal officials to halt air traffic to and from the airport.

The FAA ordered the ground stop at 12:04 a.m. EDT, according to a statement from its Air Traffic Control System Command Center. The agency later said the airport would be closed until 2 p.m.

The plane struck the Port Authority Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting vehicle on Runway 4 late Sunday as it was responding to a separate, unknown incident, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates LaGuardia, told UPI in a statement.

The National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement the involved vehicle was a fire truck and that it had deployed a team expected to arrive at LaGuardia later Monday to begin its investigation.

The extent of the collision and whether there were any casualties was unclear early Monday.

The Port Authority said the airport was closed to facilitate the response and allow for an investigation. Emergency response protocols were activated and its police force was at the scene working with airline and federal authorities, the agency said.

The New York Fire Department confirmed to UPI that it had responded to an incident.

Air Canada confirmed to UPI that it was aware of the crash involving Air Canada Express Flight 8646 from Montreal, Canada, to New York City.

The flight was operated by Jazz Aviation, which said in a statement that the incident occurred at 11:47 p.m. EST Sunday. The plane was carrying 72 passengers and four crew, the Halifax-based airline said.

All streets and highway exits to the airport have been closed until further notice, according to the New York Police Department.

New York City’s official Emergency Notification System has issued an alert warning residents to expect “cancellations, road closures, traffic delays and emergency personnel near LaGuardia Airport.”

Flight 8646, a CRJ900 regional jet, had departed from Montreal at about 10:35 p.m. EST, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24.

This is a developing story.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Libor Jany and Howard Blume, giving you the latest on city and county government.

It was a dramatic moment for City Hall: Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, appearing at a meeting about reining in certain traffic stops by police, revealed that he had been pulled over only two days earlier.

Harris-Dawson, who is Black, told his colleagues that police have stopped him four times since he took office in 2015. During the most recent incident, he said, an officer asked him a number of questions, including, “How do you have this vehicle?”

“It was as traumatic on Wednesday as it was when I was 16,” Harris-Dawson said at the March 6 committee meeting.

It wasn’t the Los Angeles Police Department that pulled over Harris-Dawson’s car, a Tesla Model Y with a government license plate. Instead, it was an officer from the L.A. Unified School District police, who began trailing him while he was heading to work on the freeway, Harris-Dawson said recently.

The district has provided minimal details, and its police union has not commented. But the union that represents nearly 8,700 LAPD officers, known for its bare knuckle politics, is now deeply involved.

Ricky Mendoza, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, urged Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman on Thursday to investigate whether Harris-Dawson attempted to resist, delay or obstruct the officer who carried out the traffic stop, in violation of state law.

Mendoza pointed to a California Post story that accused Harris-Dawson of contacting an unnamed school board member during the incident “in an apparent effort to get out of the citation.”

Tom Saggau, a police union spokesperson, said Harris-Dawson was caught driving “recklessly” in a school zone — and should have disclosed it during his remarks about the incident.

“Mr. Harris-Dawson’s testimony implied LAPD pulled him over because of his race, not his driving behavior,” Saggau said in an email. “That implication painted our minority-majority membership as racist, and we will always stand up for our membership and correct falsehoods and other tall tales.”

Harris-Dawson, for his part, told The Times he received the citation for attempting to enter a left turn lane too early — before it was actually marked as a turn lane. That maneuver did not pose a threat to anyone, he said.

Harris-Dawson said he did contact other people during the traffic stop, to ensure he had real-time witnesses. He would not provide their names.

“I called several people during that encounter so that there was a record of it besides myself,” he said.

The Times reached out to the school board about the police union’s claims. Four of the seven, either in person or through a representative, said they did not talk to Harris-Dawson about the stop.

The dispute comes as the council is weighing new limits on “pretextual stops,” where officers use a minor violation as justification to pull someone over and then investigate whether a more serious crime has occurred. The stops have disproportionately affected Black and Latino drivers, and the LAPD has scaled back their use over the past decade.

At the meeting where Harris-Dawson revealed he had been pulled over, two council committees were discussing next steps on the issue.

On Thursday, a Harris-Dawson aide hit back at the union, accusing the group of trying to divert the public’s attention away from that work.

“Just like pretextual traffic stops, the call for these pointless investigations violates the public trust, is wholly ineffective, and wastes precious resources that could be used to keep us safe,” said Harris-Dawson spokesperson Cerrina Tayag-Rivera in a statement this week.

Asked about his recent experience with the school police, Harris-Dawson said: “It’s not up to the driver to determine if a stop is pretextual, but it felt pretextual.”

School district officials have offered only minimal information about the incident.

“During our morning school drop-off, a Los Angeles School Police Department officer conducted a traffic stop based on an observed moving traffic violation in the vicinity of one of our high schools and issued the driver a citation,” the statement said.

Harris-Dawson told The Times that the encounter began the morning of March 4, during his drive from his South L.A. home to City Hall, when he noticed a white, unmarked car following him on the northbound 110 Freeway.

He took the Adams Boulevard offramp, turned right on Adams and headed toward Main Street, with the unmarked car following him through multiple intersections. When he turned left on Main, the officer turned on his lights and pulled him over, he said.

The officer walked up to the car with his hand on his gun and told him to roll down the windows, Harris-Dawson said.

“Because it was an unmarked car … I thought I was dealing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” he said.

Harris-Dawson said the officer told him that he had illegally crossed the double-yellow line in the center of the street, preparing to turn left before his car was actually in the marked left-turn lane.

The intersection is four blocks from Santee High School.

Harris-Dawson said the officer asked him how he came to possess the car. He informed the officer that it was a city vehicle and that he sits on the council. He handed the officer his driver’s license and, at a certain point, demanded it back.

The officer refused twice, Harris-Dawson said.

“He said, ‘Are you accusing me of taking your property?’” Harris-Dawson said. “I said, ‘That’s absolutely what I’m accusing you of.’”

Harris-Dawson said he was cited for violating the state vehicle code that prohibits motorists from driving the double-yellow lines.

“That stop was not about traffic safety,” he said, adding: “It was an investigative stop where the officer decided to give a citation, frankly, because I failed the attitude test.”

Harris-Dawson said through his spokesperson that he has paid the $238 citation. Asked if he is considering any legal action, he responded: “I’m weighing all my options.”

Meanwhile, Mendoza said he wants not just the D.A. but also City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto to investigate Harris-Dawson’s behavior during the stop, determining who he called, what he said, and whether the officer was contacted by a school board member.

The police union president said it’s “unethical and potentially illegal for a city leader to use their position of power to attempt to avoid accountability for their reckless driving in a school zone.”

The Police Protective League is well known for its heavy involvement in city politics, especially during election season. On the Westside, the union has already put nearly $500,000 into efforts to reelect Councilmember Traci Park.

The union has endorsed Mayor Karen Bass, a close ally of Harris-Dawson, but hasn’t been spending on her behalf.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, who sits on the council’s public safety committee, said he believes the union is trying to “bully” Harris-Dawson, to ensure that others remain silent about pretextual stops.

“I think the council president is very courageously bringing up a reform on one of the most racist practices” in the LAPD, he said.

State of play

— DROPPING CHAVEZ: The bombshell New York Times report that found that labor organizer Cesar Chavez sexually abused minors left the state’s elected officials scrambling to rename streets, buildings and of course, the holiday itself. In L.A., Bass and several council members said they would rename the March 31 holiday “Farm Workers Day,” a move also backed at the county level by Supervisor Janice Hahn. Meanwhile, Raul Claros, running for an Eastside council seat, said Cesar Chavez Avenue should be renamed Dolores Huerta Avenue.

— DEMS WEIGH IN: The L.A. County Democratic Party threw its endorsement behind Bass and Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, Katy Yaroslavsky, Monica Rodriguez, Hugo Soto-Martínez and Tim McOsker. The group also backed several newcomers: Marissa Roy for city attorney, Zach Sokoloff for city controller and council candidates Barri Worth Girvan and Jose Ugarte.

— PLUS THE COUNTY: The Dems also threw their support behind four countywide candidates: Sheriff Robert Luna, Assessor Jeffrey Prang, Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and State Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, who is running to replace termed-out Supervisor Hilda Solis.

— SPEAKING OF WHICH: It’s been pretty clear from the past year that Horvath is not a fan of Bass, offering bracing critiques of the city’s approach to homelessness and other issues. But her four colleagues — Hahn, Solis, Kathryn Barger and Holly Mitchell — have all lined up behind the mayor’s reelection, according to a campaign announcement issued Friday.

— POLICE PAYOUT: A jury awarded $5.9 million to a former LAPD commander who claimed she was wrongfully fired over an alcohol-fueled incident in 2018. The commander, Nicole Mehringer, said she was held to a different standard than her male colleagues, losing her job after being arrested on a charge of public intoxication.

— MINDING MEASURE ULA: Councilmember Ysabel Jurado was named the chair of a new three-member ad hoc committee formed to take a fresh look at the impacts of Measure ULA, the 2022 tax on high-end property sales. She will be joined by Councilmembers John Lee and Imelda Padilla in examining the measure, which has been criticized by real estate leaders.

— HOLLYWOOD’S HOMELESS: Bass and Soto-Martínez celebrated the opening of a new homeless services hub on Hollywood Boulevard to help unhoused residents shower, find new clothes, obtain meals and receive help finding an apartment or a bed in an interim housing facility.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to South Los Angeles, focusing on the area around Broadway and 23rd Street, according to the mayor’s team.
• On the docket next week: The council meets Tuesday to discuss its strategy for complying with Senate Bill 79, which seeks to add taller, denser apartments within a half mile of rail and dedicated bus stops.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

March 16 (UPI) — Even before a round of mid-May blizzards started blanketing an area stretching from South Dakota to northern Michigan on Saturday, a partial government shutdown already was making air travel miserable for Americans.

Extreme winter weather snarled all manner of transportation across the Midwest, while airports in Atlanta, Charlotte and elsewhere on the East Coast were slowed by pounding rain, on top of an increasing number of TSA employees either calling out sick or quitting their jobs because they are not getting paid.

As of early evening on Monday, there were 21,549 total flights delayed in the United States and 5,159 flights that were canceled, Flight Aware reported.

The Department of Homeland Security, which is home to the Transportation Security Administration, has not been funded since Jan. 30 amid a debate in Congress over funding the Department of Homeland Security, of which TSA is a part.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress disagree on adding guardrails for DHS agencies involved with immigration amid a crackdown by the Trump administration, which has left TSA unfunded.

The nation’s air traffic controllers, customs agents and TSA agents missed their first paycheck over the weekend, which has led to hundreds of TSA employees quitting their jobs, the New York Post reported.

The partial shutdown already had affected security and other services at airports, leading to long lines and advice that travellers arrive at the airport even earlier because of how backed up they have been.

On Sunday afternoon, as airports, travellers and millions at home prepared for winter weather to roll through overnight, the trade association Airlines for America, which represents both passenger and cargo airlines, sent an open letter to Congress pleading for them to fund TSA on predictions of what is already happening.

The CEOs, which include the leaders of the biggest U.S. passenger airlines, as well as FedEx and UPS, said that without funding TSA they expect travel issues during spring break, the World Cup and other national travel dates to be as chaotic as they were last year during the longest government shutdown in history.

Making matters worse has been a wide range of extreme weather across the country, from steady showers and a tornado watch shutting down Charlotte Douglas International Airport several times this morning — with the same occurring at major airports in Atlanta, Newark, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Detroit and Minneapolis, the Charlotte Observer reported.

The weather is not expected to let up, either, with the National Weather Service predicting that while the Midwest will get a bit of a break, severe thunderstorms with damaging winds and some tornadoes — as of early afternoon more than 34 million people were under tornado watches between Florida and New Jersey — expected later into the evening.