La Cañada, Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy water polo nab postseason berths

When the CIF Southern Section playoffs get underway Tuesday afternoon, the city of La Cañada Flintridge will be represented by two programs.

Both the La Cañada High and Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy teams were awarded postseason berths to the playoffs as the pairings were released Saturday.

The Rio Hondo League co-champion Spartans will open the first round of the Division V postseason on Wednesday, while the Tologs will commence in Tuesday’s Division III wild-card.

“We’ve had two goals from the beginning of the season,” Spartans Coach Davey Brown said. “The first was to win the Rio Hondo League, which we did when we shared it. The second is to win CIF or to at least get to the finals, which we’ll now try to do.”

La Cañada owns a 19-6 mark, split the Rio Hondo League title with No. 2 Temple City (17-3) and is seeded fourth in the tournament. The Spartans will host North Hills League No. 2 seed Brea Olinda (14-13) on Wednesday at 5 p.m. at Pasadena City College.

A Spartans’ victory would jettison La Cañada into Saturday’s quarterfinal round against either Rio Mesa (21-8), Charter Oak (8-7) or Redlands East Valley (10-14).

La Cañada heads into its first-round match on fire, as the Spartans have won 12 of their last 13 contests, including two impressive victories to conclude the regular season.

The Spartans blanked San Marino, 14-0, on Monday to earn a split of the team’s first league crown since 2009. La Cañada has a chance to match or surpass the playoff run of the 2009 squad, guided by All-Area Player of the Year Berit Kaesler, which advanced to the Division III semifinals.

Monday’s win was followed by a 10-7 victory over then top-ranked Los Altos (19-10) in Hacienda Heights on Wednesday.

There was an unofficial defeat, however, among the victories when La Cañada lost a league tie-breaking coin flip to Temple City, which took the league’s No. 1 seed. The Spartans also ended the season ranked No. 3 in the final division poll ahead of the Rio Hondo League’s South Pasadena at No. 4 and Los Altos at No. 5. However, the seedings looked a bit different with Palm Desert at No. 1, Temple City at No. 2, then Los Altos at No. 3 and La Cañada at No. 4.

As for Flintridge Sacred Heart, the Mission League fourth-place Tologs (18-10) began preparations for one team Saturday morning and then another in the afternoon.

When the original pairings were released, Flintridge Sacred Heart was scheduled for a roughly 384-mile round trip to face PAC-8 League third seed San Luis Obispo (17-9). Those plans changed around 12:30 p.m. when the Southern Section office made several amendments to the pairings, including switching the Tologs’ opponent to Pac-8 League No. 2 Righetti (13-6), which saved the team about 80 miles.

The contest is currently slated for 5 p.m. although Tologs Coach Carlos Ponce said he would try to move up the start time due to the commute.

Should Flintridge Sacred Heart win, which would be the program’s first postseason victory, the Tologs would then travel to face Bay League champion Mira Costa (17-13) on Wednesday.