Vanguard beats Newport Beach in championship shootout

IRVINE — As the start of the final in the under-12 boys’ championship division neared at the USA Water Polo Junior Olympics, one of the referees asked if there would be a PA announcer. No one took the microphone to announce the teams and players involved in the finale at Woollett Aquatics Center.

The Newport Beach Water Polo Inc. A team and the Huntington Beach-based Vanguard Blue A team did not really need any pregame introductions on Tuesday afternoon. These two local clubs are very familiar with each other.

The teams played for the second time in a 25-hour span, and the second meeting turned out as tight as the first. This time, they needed more than four quarters to determine a winner.

Sai Bassett’s successful penalty shot with 69 seconds left in regulation helped Vanguard tie the game at 4-4. Then while Newport Beach had a power-play situation, Reed Pantaleon came up with a steal in the waning seconds to force a shootout.

In the shootout, Ryder Dodd gave Vanguard the lead by putting away the first five-meter shot. Dodd was also the player who gave Vanguard its only lead in regulation, coming with 3:46 left in the opening quarter.

Vanguard made sure it wouldn’t relinquish the lead again.

Goalie Jay Pyle stopped the first two shots from Newport Beach, and Landon Akerstrom and Zachary Bettino put away their shots, leading Vanguard to a 3-1 win in the shootout.

“Our kids have a lot of resilience,” said Vanguard coach Brian Anderson, whose team fell behind by as many as two goals. “They have been playing up at 14s over the entire year as a 12-and-under team and that builds a lot of toughness. They’ve battled through this entire year. They’re not scared of anything.”

Vanguard, which went 7-1 during the tournament, avenged its only setback. The day before, Newport Beach pulled out a 5-4 win in the quarterfinals against Vanguard at El Toro High.

Vanguard had to win twice more to make it to the championship. Vanguard beat Rose Bowl Red A 5-3 in Monday’s play-in game for the semifinals. In the semifinals on Tuesday morning, Vanguard defeated 680 Red A 7-5, setting up another showdown with Newport Beach, which was coached by Marco Palazzo.

No team had downed Newport Beach, which reached the final with a 5-3 win against Greenwich A, until Vanguard did. Newport Beach won its first seven games, outscoring the opposition 64-17 during the stretch.

Vanguard slowed down Newport Beach, holding it to a tournament-low four goals and not allowing it to produce on six power-play opportunities. The left-handed shooting Nicholas Kennedy recorded half of Newport Beach’s goals, each coming on penalty shots.

The penalty shot is how Vanguard gave itself a chance to get back in it. Bassett converted one right before halftime to cut Newport Beach’s lead to 3-2.

With about 2½ minutes to go in the third quarter, Vanguard scored on the power play. Blake Postil got one past goalie Alexander Altshuler to even things up at 3-3. Seventy-five seconds later, Newport Beach retook the lead on Tyler Slutzky’s lob from nine meters out that found the upper-right corner of the net.

Vanguard tried to tie it in the fourth, but either Altshuler denied Vanguard early on or Finley LeSieur came up with a steal to end a power-play advantage midway through the quarter. What led to Vanguard eventually knotting the score was an exclusion call on Carter Loth, who kept pressuring the ball, resulting in a penalty shot for Vanguard. Bassett capitalized for Vanguard.

“He probably didn’t hear [the ref], but that’s the name of the game,” Anderson said of Loth. “That happened to us actually against [Newport Beach] in the quarterfinals. Our kid got excluded. He didn’t leave the field of play. They drew a penalty and they beat us in the quarterfinals.

“We played Newport over the course of the year probably three or four times before this, and we had won every time. They clipped us last game, but we finally got them. A lot of good athletes on that team. [Benjamin Liechty], the setter, is a load. Loth’s a heck of a player, too. They obviously have a 6-foot goalie [in Altshuler] who is phenomenal.”

david.carrillo@latimes.com

Twitter: @ByDCP