Local Team Missing in Water Polo Event

It’s like losing your voice on opening night or missing a surprise party in your honor.

For six of the past eight years, San Diego Sunset, the county’s top water polo club, has qualified for the U.S. Senior Men’s National Water Polo championships.

This year, the tournament will be held at UC San Diego’s Canyon View Pool, beginning today and ending Sunday. It took years of finagling by Pacific Southwest Water Polo to bring the event here for the first time. But Sunset, the two-time defending senior indoor champion, won’t be competing.

At last week’s zone qualifying, from which five of the 12 teams advanced, San Diego was knocked out by Santa Barbara and Stanford.

“It’s extremely depressing,” said Denny Harper, Sunset and UCSD coach. “Qualifying for this tournament is not an easy process at all. Summer after summer we’ve worked so hard to get it here, and now we’re not playing in our hometown. It just didn’t work out.”

Harper has had to completely change his goals for this tournament.

“At this very minute, I’m trying to adjust our goals,” he said. “When I wanted to host it, the motivation was being able to play in a national tournament without having to travel.”

But with his team not competing, Harper is focusing on putting on an impressive event instead of his usual coaching duties.

“This have been a community effort,” he said. “Everyone’s worked . . . to get this thing done right.”

This is the first year the event, which ranks right behind the NCAA championship in importance, has been held outside the Los Angeles or San Francisco Bay areas.

Dave Alberstein, PSWP district chairman and tournament director, said that outside of those areas, water polo awareness is low at best.

“The real reason (it was moved here),” Alberstein said, “is there is a growing realization that if this is to grow across the county, they need to start putting the sport on display in other cities. Here, it’s not as advanced as it is in L.A. or San Francisco.”

Next year’s championship will be in Portland, Ore.

“It’s difficult to obtain national sponsorship if (sponsors) don’t feel they’ll get national exposure,” Alberstein said. “Putting water polo on display in other cities is one way to do it.”

Water Polo Notes

While the absence of San Diego Sunset is disappointing, the tournament is not totally without San Diego representation. Valhalla graduate James Fletcher plays for Newport B (UC Irvine’s varsity) and University graduate Eric Bockstahler plays for Bruin Polo (UCLA’s top team). . . . The top four seeded teams of the 12 in the tournament are Newport A, with three 1988 Olympians on the roster, Beach, affiliated with Long Beach State, Golden Bear of Berkeley and Bruin Polo.