PREP NOTEBOOK : Volleyball Teams to Get a Look at Outside Competition

The Orange County/Southern California Girls’ Volleyball Championships, which begin today with pool play at six local high schools, traditionally gives the county’s top teams a chance to size up each other in the early season. This year, local teams also will get to see how they stack up against some competitive teams from outside the county.

The 48-team tournament has two divisions: Division I, which will be played at Huntington Beach, Edison and Marina, and Division II, which will be played at Ocean View, Westminster and Los Alamitos.

Huntington Beach (1-0), which advanced to the State Division II final last season, is top-seeded in Division I and Mater Dei (1-0), which returns five senior starters, is seeded second.

One non-local team making its debut in the tournament in Division I is third-seeded Torrance Bishop Montgomery (0-1), which won the Southern Section Division II championship in 1992 and 1994 and was a State Division III finalist in 1993.

The Division I final is scheduled for 4 p.m. Saturday at Edison. In Division II, which includes top-seeded Katella (1-0), second-seeded Sunny Hills (2-0) and third-seeded Trabuco Hills (0-1), the final is scheduled for 4 p.m. Saturday at Ocean View.