Daily Pilot High School Female Athlete of the Week: Walsh tough to score on
Ask Laguna Beach High girls’ water polo coach Ethan Damato for the characteristics that make junior goalie Thea Walsh great, and there are many of them.
Walsh has very quick reflexes, and reads opposing shooters very well. She’s also a great passer, which sparks the Breakers’ potent counterattack.
Ask Walsh to describe her own game, though, and the response isn’t as immediate. She prefers to talk about the role that her teammates play.
“I definitely rely on my team a lot,” she said. “They help me so much, whether it’s positioning or field blocking. Most of the time, they’ve got it down. I guess my weakness there would be at times not trusting them. When someone’s about to shoot, and I don’t know if they’re going to get the field block so I over-commit or something. I know I should put my trust completely in them, because they are capable of doing so many things.”
The answer says it all about Walsh, who is soft-spoken. But what she also represents is the backbone of the defense for the top high school girls’ water polo team in CIF Southern Section Division 1, and all of Southern California.
More evidence was provided last weekend, when Walsh received the Most Outstanding Goalie honor at the Irvine Southern California Championships tournament. She had 62 saves in the five-game tournament for the Breakers, who won their fourth straight Irvine tournament. In three of the games, she had 15 saves, including the tournament final against Mater Dei, which Laguna won, 14-7.
Walsh also made 15 saves in the quarterfinal against Los Alamitos, nearly pitching a shutout until the Griffins scored in the final minute.
Los Al Coach Dave Carlson has been around a long time. The reason for his team’s offensive futility in that game was clear to him.
“Once you get past that defense, you’ve got that Thea Walsh girl,” Carlson said. “Hands down [the best goalie in Orange County].”
Damato wouldn’t argue. He’s coached her at the high school, club at national team levels. She has been the starting goalie for Damato on the SET 16-and-under girls’ team, and he also coached her when he was the Cadet national team head coach two years ago. More recently, both player and coach were at the FINA Youth World Championships in New Zealand last December.
In that tournament, Walsh played a backup role to former Corona del Mar goalie Heidi Ritner. It’s a position with which she’s familiar, as she had to do it her first two years on varsity at Laguna Beach as well. The Breakers had another great goalie, Holly Parker, who graduated last year and is now at USC.
“As they got to know each other more, they became great friends,” Damato said. “I think it was a really healthy situation, and something that made them both better on a daily basis. And having two elite goalies to train every day made our practices better. I think it’s helped her at club, helped her on the national team and I think it’s helped her come right in this year [to the starting varsity spot]. Not only have we not skipped a beat, but she’s been arguably the best goalie in high school in Southern California.”
Walsh showed promise in the sport from a young age. The summer before her freshman year, she was tournament MVP after helping the Laguna Beach 14-and-under girls’ team win gold at the USA Water Polo Junior Olympics.
She continues to perform on the big stage for the Breakers (27-0), who completed a perfect regular season with a 13-8 victory over Orange Lutheran on Thursday. Laguna Beach will be the top seed for the Division 1 playoffs, which begin next week.
The Breakers are stacked with talent, led by senior captains Aria Fischer (Stanford-bound), Bella Baldridge (Stanford) and Claire Sonne (Cal). Walsh said she admires the talent and leadership of Fischer, the Olympic gold medalist.
But Walsh is also part of an extremely deep junior class. Entering the week, she had 242 saves this season, which already ranked her third in Breakers single-season annals. She’s a sure thing to break the Laguna single-season record of 263 saves, set by Lina Moore in 2001.
Her talent has even helped the Breakers lately as injuries hit. Sophia Lucas, a junior who is a standout one-on-one defender, missed time with a finger injury before returning last week and junior defender Isabel Riches is also currently out with a concussion.
“We knew we had to rely on Thea a little bit more, maybe run a little bit more zone and help a little bit more,” Damato said. “We like to press, we like to play you one on one. But with a goalie like Thea behind us, we felt like in order to stay out of foul trouble, we had to change some things [with the injuries]. We felt really confident in the ability to do that, especially with the level Thea’s been playing at lately.”
That level netted her the big Most Outstanding Goalie honor at the Irvine Southern California Championships. But she is modest, too, when talking about earning that honor.
“That was really nice,” Walsh said. “I liked that, but if I didn’t get it, I wouldn’t have minded either. It makes me happy [to be considered the best goalie], but I don’t know, it just makes me feel weird. I guess I just don’t want to come across as anything.”
Walsh doesn’t need to talk a big game. Her play in the pool for the Breakers says plenty.
Thea Walsh
Born: Nov. 10, 2000
Hometown: Laguna Beach
Height: 5-foot-9
Sport: Water polo
Year: Junior
Coach: Ethan Damato
Favorite food: Pasta
Favorite movie: “Finding Nemo”
Favorite athletic moment: Winning the USA Water Polo Junior Olympics in 14-and-unders.
Week in review: Walsh earned Most Outstanding Goalie honors after helping Laguna Beach win its fourth straight Irvine Southern California Championships tournament title.
Twitter: @mjszabo
