Is Another Title for Knights Plain as Day?

The Foothill girls’ water polo team has dominated this season so thoroughly that some might concede tonight’s Southern Section Division I championship game to the Knights.

Foothill carries a 21-game winning streak into the final. The Knights have won 35 of their last 36, including a victory in last season’s Division I title game. They have outscored opponents, 29-5, in three playoff games.

And the team it meets tonight in the final, Santa Margarita? Foothill buried the Eagles by 10 goals in the last meeting.

Second-seeded Santa Margarita (22-8) and top-seeded Foothill (28-1) play at 8 p.m. tonight at Belmont Plaza in Long Beach. The Eagles are searching for any way to improve upon that 11-1 loss earlier this month to Foothill in the semifinals of the Irvine Southern California Championships.

“We got hammered that day,” Santa Margarita Coach Scott Taylor said. “I don’t know what it will take to beat them.”

Only Newport Harbor had an answer to that question this season, defeating the Knights, 5-3, on Dec. 29. But Foothill’s two best players, Gabbie Domanic and Brittany Hayes, missed that game to play with the U.S. youth national team in Canada.

“I think if you take the best players from all the teams in our half of the bracket,” Carlson said, “you get [El Toro’s] Don Stoll or Taylor to coach, you get most of the breaks and the calls, then you pray . . . you’ll have a chance to beat Foothill.”

What makes the Knights so powerful?

Foothill features two marquee scorers--youth national team players Hayes and Domanic--and a standout goalie, Emily Feher, to anchor a suffocating defense. But another great concern for opponents is Foothill’s team speed.

“It’s perhaps the fastest girls’ high school team I’ve seen,” Foothill Coach Dave Mikesell said. “Brittany and Gabbie are fast, Katie Card and Breana Allison are fast, Crystal Carroll is lightning, Vickie Brown has speed too.”

Eliminating an opponent’s counterattack goals is one key for playoff success, but the Knights are so fast that teams have to go to extremes to slow them down.

“Their anticipation is also great,” said Coach Scott Hinman, who led Irvine to the Division I title games in 1999 and 2000. “You might have to take a couple of players on your offensive end and pull them back to prevent those kinds of counterattack goals.

“You give up some offense that way, but if you have the personnel to draw some kick outs and maybe get some six-on-five goals, then you might have some success against Foothill, especially if you can just make it a frontcourt game.”

But that’s not an easy task.

Hayes and Domanic are powerful scorers from two meters and have big shots. But defenses that collapse on Hayes and Domanic at two meters suffer because Carroll, Allison and Brown have all proven they can bury the open outside shots.

“And Katie Card stepped up and scored two goals [against Capistrano Valley in the semifinals],” Mikesell said. “We’ve been rockin’ and rollin’ since the second half of the season.”

Defensively, the Knights cause headaches because Brown and Allison are solid defenders who can guard the opposing team’s two-meter players effectively, and Hayes and Domanic can pressure perimeter players and be in prime position to lead a counterattack.

And there’s Feher, who began to excel last season during Foothill’s Division I championship run.

In the Irvine tournament, Feher allowed only one goal in the first four games, before Foothill defeated Bell Gardens in the final, 5-4, to break the Lancers’ 85-game winning streak. That tournament featured a field stronger than any Southern Section playoff bracket.