Daily Pilot High School Male Athlete of the Week: Carbajal enjoying fresh start with Newport Harbor

Emilio Carbajal believes in new beginnings, and the Newport Harbor High junior got one last summer.

Carbajal moved from Santa Ana to Costa Mesa with his mother, Maria Perez, after she moved out of the house where she was staying with Carbajal’s father, also named Emilio.

The younger Emilio said his three siblings, two older brothers and a younger sister, stayed in Santa Ana. But he was excited to move with his mom to Costa Mesa, just a couple of blocks west of Newport Harbor.

The move worked out athletically, as well. Carbajal had attended Mater Dei High for two years but he said he wasn’t happy there. He played goalkeeper for the Monarchs’ frosh-soph boys’ soccer team as a freshman and the junior varsity as a sophomore, never making it to the varsity, where he thought he belonged.

“I needed a better fit,” he said. “I got a fresh start. I’m just going straight forward now.”

Enrolling at Newport Harbor wasn’t too drastic of a change. Carbajal played for Newport Mesa Soccer Club for six years and one of his best friends, Alex Enriquez, is a senior center midfielder for the Sailors boys’ soccer team.

As the regular season comes into the home stretch, Carbajal is fitting in just fine with the Sailors. The goalkeeper, the Daily Pilot High School Male Athlete of the Week, has the Sailors (9-8-4, 5-1-1 in league) in contention for a Sunset League title.

Carbajal split time at keeper in the preseason with senior Carlos Prado before seizing the starting spot. In six starts in league play, he has produced four clean slates. He made eight saves against Los Alamitos last week in a scoreless draw. One of them in the 64^th minute was special, second-year Newport Harbor coach Ali Khosroshahin said.

“They hit a shot that was headed in the upper ‘V,’ and the kid got up and saved it,” Khosroshahin said. “It was a world-class type save, the kind of stuff you see on TV on the weekends, you know? … [Prado] didn’t do anything to lose his job. Emilio just has been standing on his head. The kid has made some unbelievable saves. And he plays his box really well, he can play with his feet. When you have a goalkeeper that can essentially almost be a field player, it makes life a lot easier for you.”

Newport Harbor was in first place in league until a 3-0 loss at Huntington Beach on Friday. Now it’s defending champion Edison (6-1-0 in league) that has 18 points, two more than the Sailors. The league race could come down to the wire.

Khosroshahin doesn’t expect his team to fade down the stretch like it did last year, when the Sailors also started 5-0 in league but lost their last six matches, including five in the Sunset League and a 1-0 loss at Long Beach Wilson in the first round of the CIF Southern Section Division 3 playoffs. The Sailors were shorthanded at the end of the season with senior keeper Chandler Siemonsma out with a fractured right hand, plus all of their games were on the road as Davidson Field was closed for renovations.

Now they have Carbajal in the goal, a leader on a defense that is fairly young. The Sailors have two returning starters on their back line, senior center back Dan Suzuki and senior right back Dane Newton.

Carbajal does not shy away from the responsibility.

“To me, it’s a leader position, being in the back,” Carbajal said. “I want to be a leader. I want to see everything. I want to be the guy the game depends on, you know?”

Khosroshahin knows. The former head coach of Cal State Fullerton and USC women’s soccer wants to make soccer a prestigious sport on the Newport Harbor campus. He has big plans, but first he needs talented players like Carbajal.

“I want to raise the profile of high school soccer,” Khosroshahin said. “I’m tired of hearing everybody say, ‘It’s just high school.’ There’s a passion and intensity in representing your community. I hope someday we can get soccer playing at 7 o’clock consistently, to see what kind of support we can get from the community.”

Winning helps, and Carbajal has helped the Sailors do that.

He hopes his new beginning with the Sailors ends with a Sunset League title and a deep run in the Division 2 playoffs.

“It feels like going into the league we were the underdogs, targeting the big dogs like Edison and Los Al,” Carbajal said. “I feel like now we’re the targets, you know? We just have to keep our cool and be focused going into every game. Every player on this team has a role, they have their own job. If we just do it together, we’ll make the season very successful.”

*

Emilio Carbajal

Born: March 12, 2001

Hometown: Santa Ana

Height: 5 foot 10

Weight: 165 pounds

Sport: Soccer

Year: Junior

Coach: Ali Khosroshahin

Favorite food: Lasagna

Favorite movie: “12 Strong”

Favorite athletic moment: Helping his Slammers FC team make the National Cup final in Temecula last spring.

Week in review: Carbajal helped Newport Harbor stay in first place in Sunset League play by making eight saves in a scoreless draw at Los Alamitos on Jan. 19.

matthew.szabo@latimes.com

Twitter: @mjszabo