Oettinger Did It All for Westlake

It’s playoff time, which means tears will be flowing among seniors whose athletic careers will soon be coming to an end.

Emily Oettinger, a water polo standout at Westlake Village Westlake, didn’t get the chance to experience the playoffs. Her team finished fifth in the Marmonte League, so her days of athletic competition ended last week.

Since she was 4, she has participated in organized sports. From soccer and T-ball, she turned to swimming, softball and water polo. All the while, she was a brilliant scholar. In four years at Westlake, she has received only A’s on her report card. As a piano player, she has attained a level 10 certificate of merit, the highest level, in performance and theory.

She is the kind of well-rounded teenager every parent wants their child to become. And yet, her father, Bob, will be hard-pressed to find a replacement for the joy he received each time he watched her compete in athletics.

“I have been thinking about it,” he said. “Halfway through her senior year, I started dreading the last game. It’s so much fun to see her. She waves at me from the pool, and it makes my heart feel so good.”

The majority of high school athletes won’t get the chance to compete on the college level. That’s why it’s so important they and their parents enjoy their time now.

Oettinger said she would not be the same 18-year-old without sports. The friends she has made, the time management skills she has learned, the ability to communicate with people from different backgrounds -- it was all tested and mastered through sports competition.

She recorded a school-record 11 goals against Calabasas last week after being thrust into the scorer’s role because of an injury to the team’s leading scorer.

“I love the adrenaline rush scoring goals and knowing you’ve achieved for the good of the team,” she said.

In their final home game, the seniors were overwhelmed by the moment.

“The seniors got so upset, we were crying,” she said. “It’s definitely emotional.”

Discipline is probably the most important character trait she developed through sports. She has put it to use in music. For a year, she has been studying Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata third movement as part of perfecting her piano skills. Her assignment is to play the piece as well as she can, and that involves tedious study.

“You have to get it down technically, the basic notes,” she said. “Then look at it musically ... what Beethoven was trying to achieve. Once you get everything down, you have to play it over and over before you can perform.”

Perfection is usually an elusive goal, but Oettinger pulls it off in the classroom because her competitive spirit doesn’t allow her to settle for less.

“I can’t not do my best,” she said. “I always do my homework. I always study for tests, and I haven’t gotten any Bs.”

Westlake Coach Mark Garrett calls Oettinger “one of the most remarkable players and people” he has ever coached.

Her father said he hopes she tries to play water polo in college, but Oettinger says she plans to concentrate on academics, especially if she is accepted at Stanford.

After their final match, Oettinger and her senior teammates hugged and cried. Her mother stood by, tears running down her cheeks.

The time had come for Oettinger and organized sports to part ways, but she won’t let athletic competition disappear completely from her life.

“I’ll probably join a gym, surf, play tennis and swim,” she said.

*

For years, the City Section has been criticized for its archaic seeding system in which coaches directly involved in the playoffs get to participate in forming the draw. It’s an obvious conflict of interest that leads to embarrassing situations, such as occurred Saturday, when Westchester was put in the same half of the draw as top-seeded L.A. Fairfax in boys’ basketball

Westchester hasn’t lost a City playoff game since 1999. The Comets have played Fairfax in the City final in three of the last four years.

But other coaches want a chance for their teams to make the final, so the Comets got dropped to the No. 4 seeding because of two league losses to Fairfax. The schools probably will meet in the semifinals, and one won’t get to play in the state playoffs.

“You have coaches voting who have a vested interest,” Woodland Hills Taft Coach Derrick Taylor said. “It’s a flawed system.”

Taylor was one of those very coaches. After his school was denied the No. 2 seeding, he voted for Taft as No. 3 ahead of Westchester. Now Taft looks to be a good choice to make the final with the decision Tuesday to remove No. 2 Fremont from the playoffs because of an ineligible player.

“There’s no logic in the City meeting,” Taylor said. “The only logic is, ‘I’m going to do what’s best for me.’ ”

It’s time for the coaches’ associations in the City Section to make reforms and stop being the laughingstock of the CIF.

Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.