fourth volleyball player from Southern California to be accepted to MIT<\/a>, joining three others from Redondo Union who he knows.<\/p>\nHe\u2019s never received a grade other than A in Chatsworth\u2019s magnet program focused on STEM. He\u2019s such a math whiz that he took geometry in eighth grade and finished all his math classes, from chemistry to calculus, last school year. This year he\u2019s focused on AP Physics.<\/p>\n
He already owns three rings \u2014 one playing for Chatsworth\u2019s state championship basketball team with Alijah Arenas and two City Open Division volleyball titles. He\u2019s going for a third ring this season as Chatsworth is expected to be the No. 1 or No. 2 seed for the volleyball playoffs. He gave up basketball for volleyball, a sport he didn\u2019t start playing until his freshman year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the sport. I always put in extra work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
![\"Redondo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777468333_173_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Redondo Union High volleyball players (from left) Tommy Spalding, Vaughan Flaherty and Carter Mirabal are headed to MIT this fall.<\/p>\n
(Eric Sondheimer \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Unlike the Redondo Union trio, he doesn\u2019t surf and plays no instruments even though his Redondo Union friends are looking for a drummer to start a band. Wang knows math formulas, but drumming? \u201cI cannot,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn college, I\u2019m going to learn how to drum so I can join the band,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n
His size and improving skills make him a good volleyball prospect for the future. He seems all set except for dealing with cold weather.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever been in weather under 60 degrees for two days,\u201d he said. \u201cMy parents said, \u2018Good luck,\u2019 they would send me some hot Korean soup during tough days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked how he became such a good student, Wang said, \u201cMy mom and dad always put me in academic settings trying to get me to learn as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
B\u2019s on a report card are not allowed in his family.<\/p>\n
He offered a rousing endorsement for his educators at Chatsworth.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the teachers put their heart and soul into us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As for his volleyball coach, he appreciated Aghassy giving access to his phone for just a few minutes and apologizes for disrupting his speech.<\/p>\n
What a memory it will be for years to come telling the story of being in Las Vegas and learning he got into MIT.<\/p>\n
It was his jackpot worth more than money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During a volleyball tournament trip to Las Vegas in March, Chatsworth coach Sina Aghassy confiscated all his players\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[4329,124329,1810,51354,124328,48,52,51,1421,47,50,49,17162,124330,14220,9442,69882,52972,124331,124332,72],"class_list":["post-291462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-access","tag-chatsworth-high","tag-good-news","tag-grade","tag-grant-wang","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-las-vegas","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mit","tag-mit-jackpot","tag-phone","tag-player","tag-redondo-union","tag-ring","tag-sport-assignment","tag-volleyball-playoff","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Volleyball](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777468332_276_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n