Tinseth Growing Accustomed to the Cage : Water polo: After being awakened to perils of goalkeeping as a freshman at Sunny Hills High, 18-year-old has become one of Festival’s top young players.

During his freshman year at Sunny Hills High School, Andrew Tinseth slipped into the water polo goal and began blocking his teammates’ shots.

Big mistake for a freshman, as he soon discovered.

Tinseth had been in the goal only a few minutes when he was hit in the face by a ball. It was slightly less refreshing than a mudpack.

“It was Jose Santiago (now at USC) who did it,” said Tinseth, who didn’t venture back into the goal until his junior year. “We were doing shooting drills. When it hit me, I just sank.”

Five years later, life in the goal isn’t much easier for Tinseth.

His red swim cap bobbing up and down in the water, he is a marked man during the U.S. Olympic Festival matches at Cal State Long Beach.

“Water polo at this level is very fast-paced,” said Tinseth, a goalie with the South team. “No matter who you’re playing against, the quality of play is good.

“It’s not jungle ball, like in high school, where guys will shoot it from anywhere. At least here, you have an idea where it’s coming from.”

Tinseth, who redshirted his freshman year at USC, is considered one of the top young players at the Festival. He has been training with the U.S. national B team and has a chance to start at USC next season.

Still, Tinseth, 18, is an infant in the world of international water polo.

At the Festival, he has been stopping shots by older, more experienced players, such as Olympian Greg Boyer of Laguna Beach.

He hasn’t always been successful.

Of the 52 players at the Festival, only two--Matt Contreras, 16, of Baytown, Tex., and Brad Schumacher, 17, of Bowie, Md.,--are younger than Tinseth. The players’ average age is 23.

“Andrew is one of the best young players,” said Dan Leyson, a 1988 graduate of Sunny Hills and a driver on the West team. “I remember him back when he was a sophomore at Sunny Hills. We knew he was going to be good back then.”

But Leyson, 21, has given Tinseth a few lessons so far in the Festival. He scored four goals on Tinseth in a recent 11-5 victory over the South.

“I let in a few good shots,” Tinseth said. “I let in some bad ones, too. When I let in a bad one, I just try to laugh it off.”

As a senior at Sunny Hills, Tinseth was named the Southern Section’s player of the year and was a second-team All-American. He led Sunny Hills to the semifinals of the section playoffs, where the Lancers lost to Villa Park.

Tinseth has the perfect physical attributes for a goalie. He is a lanky 6 feet 4. His 6-foot-6 arm span helps him protect the goal.

Wouldn’t he make a good shot blocker in basketball as well?

“I never went into it because I have bad knees,” he said. “They wouldn’t hold up with all the jumping and running.”

But Tinseth is in good physical condition. He lifts gallon milk jugs full of water over his head to build his upper body. He runs short wind sprints “so I can get out of the goal quickly.”

Tinseth said he wanted to become a goalie because his Fullerton neighbor, Mike Day, was one of Orange County’s best when he was at Sunny Hills. Day went on to play at UC Santa Barbara.

After he was intimidated by Santiago, Tinseth stayed out of the goal until the end of his junior year.

“It was kind of a fluke,” Tinseth said. “The coach saw that I had long arms, so he told me to get in the cage.

“All the freshmen and sophomore players lined up and started winging shots at me. I didn’t let anything get past me.”

And he didn’t sink, either.