Stingy Wilson Keeper Lapin Is Player of Year

No boys’ water polo team looked smoother in transition last season than Long Beach Wilson. The Bruins routinely turned defensive stops into scoring opportunities and did it more efficiently than anybody else in the Southland.

Pulling the trigger for Wilson’s speedy counterattack was goalkeeper Chay Lapin, whose defensive skill and passing ability helped key his team’s run to its fourth consecutive Southern Section Division I title.

It was often Lapin who knocked down a shot or stole the ball and followed with a precise outlet pass to a fast-breaking teammate.

Lapin and the Bruins rode this style of play all the way to the section final, where they scored nine goals on the counterattack in a 13-11 victory over Santa Ana Foothill at Belmont Plaza in Long Beach.

“His passes are unbelievable,” Wilson Coach Tony Martinho said of Lapin, The Times’ player of the year. “He would be throwing full-length [of the pool] passes and we would just simply turn and score. Not a lot of goalkeepers can do that.”

Lapin proved to be a stellar shot-blocker soon after taking up the position in junior high. He became full-time goalkeeper at Wilson last season, finishing with 149 saves and earning first-team Division I honors.

After playing with the U.S. youth national team over the summer, Lapin came into his senior season looking to close out his career with another section title.

One of his best performances of the playoffs came in a semifinal against North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake. During a stretch late in the third quarter and early in the fourth, he made three spectacular saves on three consecutive possessions to help Wilson stretch its one-goal lead to two and eventually win, 9-7.

“They had some great opportunities and he absolutely smothered them,” Martinho said.

Like most opponents, the Wolverines found little space to aim against Lapin, who is 6 feet 5 and 190 pounds.

“He’s really lean and gets to the corners really well,” said Will Hindle-Katel, a senior at Harvard-Westlake who played with Lapin on the youth team in the summer. “He has a lot of reach.”

Wilson (30-2) lost to Harvard-Westlake, 10-9, in overtime in mid-October, thanks to three successful penalty shots. Lapin was rested during the Bruins’ other loss, to Villa Park in the final of the South Coast tournament early in the season.

In the two biggest tournaments of the season, he had 11 saves in a 10-5 victory over Foothill in the final of the S&R; Sport Cup in Irvine, then keyed a 13-7 victory over Corona del Mar in the championship game of the Tru-West Memorial Cup in San Jose.

“He’s pretty much a wall in the cage,” teammate Matt Sagehorn said. “He amazes me every time he’s in goal.”

Lapin, who has applied to UCLA, California and Pepperdine, said he won’t remember his successes this season as much as he will the camaraderie. “I played with most of these guys since the sixth or seventh grade,” he said. “You’ll never get a chance to play with the same group of guys.”

Martinho said he considers Lapin the best boys’ goalkeeper he has ever coached, though he’s not ready to call him the best goalkeeper he has ever coached.

“One exception might be Jackie Frank,” Martinho said of the goalkeeper on the 2004 U.S. women’s Olympic water polo team, whom he coached at Los Alamitos from 1997 to 1998. “But it would be hard to compare apples and oranges.”