El Toro’s Pinciroli Gets Northern Exposure

Bill Pinciroli left his native Brazil more than a year ago to get an education in the United States.

Learning English is a Pinciroli family priority--Bill’s older sister, Cristiana, spent a year of high school in Maryland to that end--and what better way to learn the language than immersion in California culture.

Which way to the beach, dude?

But Pinciroli had another motive for making the 10,000-mile trip north: water polo, another family priority. His father, Pedro, is a Brazilian water polo legend who played in two Olympic Games; his mother, Olga, is the manager of the Brazilian women’s national team, and Cristiana is a member of the women’s team and is now playing professionally in Europe. Soon his younger brother, Filipe, 11, will probably take up the sport, Pinciroli said.

“My father says water polo must be in our blood,” he said.

So when the family looked into sending Bill to the United States, it tapped its sources in the water polo community. Foreign exchange programs were ruled out because schools are randomly selected and they sought a strong program with a good coach.

At the suggestion of Sandy Nitta, U.S. women’s national team coach, they considered a private school in Hawaii, but that seemed too distant. Becky Shaw, the team leader of the U.S. women’s team, looked into several Orange County schools and the family decided on El Toro.

Last September, Pinciroli moved in with the family of an El Toro water polo player and joined the team. Because of Southern Section transfer rules, he wasn’t eligible to play in games but practiced with the Chargers and was made to feel welcome.

“I planned to stay one year but I really liked it here, so I decided to stay and graduate from El Toro High,” Pinciroli said.

By staying a second year, he also became eligible to play for El Toro, which is good news for the Chargers.

“We would have been a very good team without him,” El Toro Coach Don Stoll said. “We’re even better with him.”

El Toro has won Southern Section championships in four of the last five seasons, including the Division I title last season. This year the Chargers are 15-1 and top-ranked in Orange County and Division I.

Pinciroli has joined a tight-knit group. Many of the starters have been playing polo together since they were 9. But Pinciroli says he hasn’t been made to feel like an outsider.

“In the beginning it was kind of hard,” he said. “I didn’t know the language. I didn’t know anybody. But the team is full of nice guys and now they are like my family here.”

There was some resentment when it became apparent that Pinciroli would be starting this season, admitted Brandon Stout, the Chargers’ leading scorer with 49 goals and 37 assists.

“Then people realized it was for the benefit of the team and that he can get the job done better than some of the others,” Stout said.

Stout, a lefty who is a member of the U.S. youth national team, and Pinciroli are clearly the most talented El Toro players. Pinciroli, who plays the two-meter position on offense, trails only Stout in scoring with 43 goals and 26 assists.

“One is left-handed and one’s right-handed, so they bracket the cage like bookends,” Stoll said. “It’s a pleasure to have two good players like that.”

El Toro is helped further by another Brazilian player, Marco Avanzi, who is attending the school and practicing with the team. But since he is a senior, he won’t ever be eligible to play for the Chargers.

However, in practice, Avanzi, 6 feet 2, 185 pounds, is able to simulate an opponent’s best player, much like Pinciroli, 6-2, 170 pounds, did last year.

Now Pinciroli is guarding the opponent’s best in games , a situation he prefers.

“Last year when I couldn’t play water polo, I was mad,” he said.

That sort of competitive desire helped Pinciroli, 17, when he was practicing with the Brazilian junior national team at 16. Pinciroli is probably among the top 20 players and among the top five in his age group in Brazil, said Ricardo Azevedo, who played for the Brazilian national team and is now the coach at Long Beach Wilson and an assistant coach on the U.S. national team.

Azevedo, who played briefly on the national team with Pedro Pinciroli, said he encouraged the family to send Bill to the United States to play high school water polo because of the stronger competition.

Money wasn’t an object. Pedro is an executive with Folha de Sao Paulo, one of the largest newspapers in Sao Paulo, a metropolis of 19 million.

Pedro was the top Brazilian player during most of the 1960s when the team was a world power. He helped Brazil to victory over the United States in the gold-medal game of the 1963 Pan American Games and helped his team to top-10 finishes in the Toyko and Mexico City Olympics.

Brazil has made only one Olympics since 1968 in Mexico City--Los Angeles in 1984 after four qualifiers backed out because of the Soviet-led boycott.

Bill was raised in an athletic family. His mother, Olga, had been a national tennis champion in the ‘60s. He and his siblings were active in swimming and other sports early.

The family lives in a luxury apartment building in Sao Paulo across the street from Club Sport Pinheiros, an athletic complex that is a Brazilian counterpart to U.S. country clubs.

Pinciroli played water polo for that club and will again when he returns--he doesn’t know yet whether he wants to play college water polo in the United States.

But now he concentrates on honing his game and helping his team try for another Southern Section title--”I think this team has a good chance to go to the finals again,” he said.

And about that English language? Apparently, he mastered that quickly.

“Last year on one of our first grade checks, we had 11 players who had Fs in English,” Stoll said. “Bill had an A.”