Newport team Italy-bound

There’s at least one person who is jealous of the 11-and-under athletes from the Newport Beach Water Polo Club, and he’s two decades their senior.

Newport Harbor High boys’ water polo coach Ross Sinclair gave the boys a sendoff on Friday evening at the Sailors’ pool.

“It’s the experience of a lifetime,” Sinclair told the players. “I wish I was your age and I could do that. Represent Newport well, all right boys?”

The 11-and-under team, coached by Marco Palazzo, left Saturday for Europe, a place none of the boys has been. More specifically, they’re headed to Italy to compete in the HabaWaba Festival, the largest international youth water polo tournament in the world.

Palazzo is excited for his team of Gavin Netherton, Ben Liechty, Tyler Slutzky, Dane Clayton, Finn LeSieur, Owen Tift and Carter Loth. He’s also excited to return to his home country of Italy, where he was a professional water polo player and competed for the national team for six years.

But it’s not about him, he said. It’s more about the kids.

“This tournament is very popular,” Palazzo said. “It’s going to be a really great experience for the kids. In the 11-and-under bracket, we have 98 teams from 14 different countries, and I believe we are going to be the only American team.

“We knew about this tournament, we were just waiting to find the group of families to go and play in the tournament. It’s a big commitment for the families to go to Europe at this age.”

The trip was organized with the NBWPC younger age groups director, Stefano Ragosa. The tournament begins Monday in the town of Lignano Sabbiadoro, in northeastern Italy, and concludes Saturday.

Palazzo expects his squad to be busy, with three to four games per day. Not only the games are valuable, he said, but also the cultural experience. The players seem to agree.

“We’re going to be representing our country, and that makes me feel really excited,” LeSieur said. “It’s going to be interesting to test our skills against the other clubs. Our biggest competition is probably going to be the Croatian teams, or the Hungarian teams.”

If the seven-player team seems small, it is. The plan is to pick up three Italian players, including a goalie, for the tournament. Other Newport 12-and-under players, who are too old to participate in the HabaWaba tournament, will stay behind in Orange County and train with the NBWPC 14-and-under team.

There’s reason to believe that the Italy-bound group can do well. All seven of the players were on the Newport Beach 10-and-under team that earned bronze at last summer’s USA Water Polo Junior Olympics.

Liechty, LeSieur and Loth also have been playing on a 12-and-under team that has had success lately, winning gold at the San Diego Cup as well as the Sailors Cup, a smaller tournament hosted by NBWPC. As the only 10-year-old, Liechty is the youngest player in the Italy-bound group, but he’s also the tallest player at 5-foot-4. He plays center, while Loth is the team’s primary defender.

“I feel like this team has real good chemistry,” Liechty said.

LeSieur has been the one scouting out possible opponents. It makes sense that he’s so into it. Nearly three years ago, he was the one who ran around the Newport Harbor pool deck with an Italian flag in support of then-Tars senior Luca Cupido, who now plays for Cal and the U.S. men’s senior national team.

LeSieur said he hopes his 11U team gets to do battle with a team from Egypt called the Gezira Dolphines.

“They’re from an island in the middle of the Nile River in central Cairo,” LeSieur said. “I did research on all of the teams. I looked up where they were all from. I think we can do pretty well. I know the teams in Europe are pretty good, but I’ve heard that they start getting really good around 13-and-under, 15-and-under.

“We have a good relationship,” he continued. “We’ve known each other for a long time, and we’ve bonded a lot. We have a lot of experience playing with each other.”

After the tournament concludes Saturday, Palazzo said he plans to take the team to Verona and Venice.

Several of the players and their families plan to stay in Europe after that for some more sightseeing. Liechty and LeSieur will be taking a train across Italy to continue playing with an Italian club.

“We’re playing an in ocean tournament, up in the 13-and-unders,” LeSieur said. “We’ll stay for like two weeks.”

This enthusiasm for the sport is what Palazzo, who was an assistant coach for the U.S. men’s national team at the 2012 London Olympics, likes to see.

“For me, it will be a good opportunity to coach a team from Newport for the first time ever in my own country,” Palazzo said. “I’m looking forward to it, but this is all about the kids. This is the first year that we’re going to HabaWaba, and we wish we can do this in the future.

“With Ross Sinclair, the program is blooming with a lot of young kids who have joined Newport Beach Water Polo. We’ve had many kids sign up, and we’re really happy that we provide this service to the community. It’s a pleasure to see all of these kids falling in love with water polo, which is a great sport.”

On the eve of the trip’s beginning, it was perhaps Slutzky who summed up his emotions the most succinctly.

“I’m excited, but super-nervous,” he said.