Southern Section Water Polo Championships : South Coast League, Teeming With Powerful Entries, Seeks Its First Title Since 1980

It has been 8 years since the South Coast League won a Southern Section water polo championship. There’s a good chance that drought will end next week.

The league has three teams in today’s 3-A semifinals at Belmont Plaza in Long Beach. And none are there by upset or fluke.

The league’s entries are the top 3 seeded teams. El Toro High School is No. 1, followed by Capistrano Valley and San Clemente. All are looking to become the first South Coast League team since Mission Viejo to win the title.

“Heck, we could have had all four seeds, but you can only have three teams from each league qualify for the playoffs,” El Toro Coach Don Stoll said. “Mission Viejo was our fourth-place team and they beat Marina the last week of the season and Marina was the fourth seed.”

El Toro (18-1) will play Riverside Poly (15-12), which upset Marina in the quarterfinals, at 12:30 p.m. San Clemente (14-11) plays Capistrano Valley (18-4-1) at 10:30 a.m. The final will be Wednesday.

Although it hasn’t won a title since 1980, the league always has been strong in water polo. Last season Capistrano Valley and San Clemente reached the semifinals, but both lost to Empire League schools.

Capistrano Valley lost to Los Alamitos and San Clemente lost to El Dorado, the eventual champion. It was the Golden Hawks’ third consecutive 3-A title.

“Because El Dorado had been so dominant in the 3-A, the Southern Section moved the Empire League up to 4-A this season,” San Clemente Coach Steve Yancey said. “We weren’t unhappy about El Dorado leaving. We lost to El Dorado in the semifinals last year and in the finals the year before.”

The Tritons have lost to El Toro and Capistrano Valley. However, San Clemente does have the edge in experience with four players remaining from the 1986 runner-up team.

Seniors Sam Allevato, Kevin Perkins, Mike Ankrom and Brian Matthews have been in the program 4 years.

By contrast, Capistrano Valley starts only one senior, with five juniors and one sophomore.

Junior Paul Felton is the Cougars’ leading scorer with 92 goals. But the team relies on a balanced attack.

El Toro, which starts five juniors, is led by Bill Coffman and Matt Teeple. Coffman has 53 goals and Teeple 48.

In the 4-A semifinals today at Belmont Plaza:

Second-seeded Corona del Mar (26-3) plays third-seeded Long Beach Wilson (17-2) at 2:30 p.m. and top-seeded Sunny Hills (27-2) plays Newport Harbor (18-11) at 4:30 p.m.