Breakers one of the favorites at Masters

Fresh off its CIF Southern Section Division II championship, the Laguna Beach High girls’ water polo team is competing in the Masters Tournament that begins today at four pools throughout Orange County.

The 16-team tournament features finalists from each of the six division championship games, plus semifinalists from Division I and at-large teams.

Laguna Beach, the No. 3 seed, plays against No. 14 Arroyo Grande today at 2:30 p.m. at Santa Margarita High. Should the Breakers win, they’d play either No. 6 Los Alamitos or No. 11 Mater Dei in the quarterfinals at 7:30 p.m. at the same venue.

The Breakers (28-4) might be looking to avenge some of their four losses. All came to Division I teams, and all were by a single goal: Dos Pueblos (by a score of 7-6), Los Alamitos (6-5), Newport Harbor (10-9) and Corona del Mar (9-8).

“I’m looking forward to going up against those Division I teams again,” Breakers senior center Annika Dries said. “I think that’s a fun thing. At the same time, it’s good to know that we can set out to accomplish a goal. We set out the goal to win Division II, and we did, and now we can take a stab at those Division I teams. It’s just a matter of finishing. We’ll see if this has kind of prepped us for that. We’ll see if we can go win something at Masters.”

CdM is the top-seeded team in the tournament. Dos Pueblos would have been top-seeded after winning the Division I title, but the Chargers decided not to come down again from the Santa Barbara area this weekend.

The tournament semifinals are set for 1 and 2 p.m. Saturday at El Toro High, with the finals at 7 p.m. at El Toro.

“” Matt Szabo