Ocean View boys’ water polo has season of improvement come to end at Culver City

The Ocean View boys’ water polo team couldn’t build on a strong start Thursday afternoon as eight expulsions, some poor passing, and, finally, fatigue enabled Culver City to turn a tight Division 5 game into a romp, scoring 11 second-half goals to pull away for a 17-8 second-round victory in the CIF Southern Section playoffs at Culver City Municipal Splash at Veterans Memorial Park.

Joseph Stanbridge scored six goals, including penalties, to provide two of Ocean View’s three first-quarter leads, but the eighth-ranked Centaurs (18-15), who traveled to play top seed Simi Valley Royal (25-4) in a quarterfinal Saturday, tightened their aggressive defense and used a 10-1 second-half run to turn a 6-6 encounter into something else.

The Seahawks (15-12) have just seven players, so there are no substitutes, and Culver City took advantage, double-teaming Stanbridge and junior Conner Davidson from the start, forcing turnovers that led to seven goals, and generating exclusions that led to seven more plus the end of junior Omar Omran’s day, following his third exclusion with a little under three and a half minutes to play.

“Usually teams don’t capitalize on us having seven guys, they don’t really work for exclusions as much,” Ocean View coach Jake Huynen said. “This team did a very good job working for ejections and [had] a lot of movement on offense, which is really hard for our defense to adjust to. ... We try to get zero ejections, but when we get ejected a lot, we tend to struggle.”

The Seahawks fell behind right at the start, with an errant first pass leading to the first of three Felix Hummel goals just 27 seconds in, then surged ahead on two Stanbridge finishes, the first from Omran’s feed 51 seconds later and the second on a penalty after Culver City goaltender Natan Dei followed two saves with a foul.

Ryder Dzurec pulled the Centaurs even on their first power play a little more than a minute after that, but Stanbridge converted a penalty after another Dei foul on the next possession for a 3-2 edge. A turnover gifted Gershom Santiago’s equalizer, and Ocean View took its last lead on Omran’s long shot to the upper-left corner wth three seconds to go in the opening period.

Culver City scored the first three goals of the second quarter, but the Seahawks managed to pull within a goal on Davidson’s strike from an Omran pass with 19 seconds left in the first half, and Stanbridge made it 6-6 almost 90 seconds into the second half. That was pretty much it for Ocean View, which conceded four power-play goals in the third quarter, the last two starting a seven-goal run.

“It’s unfortunate,” said Stanbridge, the Golden West League MVP and a key contributor in the Seahawks’ run to the Division 6 title game as a sophomore two years ago. “With a small team like ours, teams tend to learn what our strategy is by the second half. This happens a lot. They come back, and it makes it tough in the second half. They had a lot of good drives, our boys just got forced on their backs. Unfortunate ejections.”

Justin Urrutia and Santiago scored four goals apiece for the Centaurs, and Dzurec and Landon Ito both added three.

Huynen was pleased with Ocean View’s season. The team lost Charlie Feltz, another important figure in the 2021 run, to repeated concussions before it began — “He would have been a very big piece for us,” Huynen said — but he stuck around to work with the players who remained. Stanbridge, too, was an unofficial assistant coach, instructing teammates on how to guard opponents in the center and how to play in the hole, elements in which Huynen, a goalie on Golden West College‘s state JC championship team last year, isn’t as well-versed.

“I’ve never seen a team improve so much from beginning of season to end of season,” Huynen said. “The sheer improvement I’ve seen with this team is something that I haven’t seen before with a team that I’ve played with or coached. And I think that just comes down to minutes.

“As I’m never subbing anyone out, if they’re in the whole game, they’re playing a lot more minutes than a lot of kids are, and I think that just comes down to seeing a lot more situations, and you’re improving a lot faster.”

CIF Southern Section Division 5 playoffs

Culver City 17, Ocean View 8

SCORE BY QUARTERS

Ocean View 4 - 1 - 2 - 1 — 8

Culver City 3 - 3 - 5 - 6 — 17

Ocean View goals: Stanbridge 6, Omran 1, Davidson 1. Exclusions: Omran 3 (ejected fourth quarter, 3:20), Davidson 2, Stanbridge 2, Hughes. Penalties: Hughes.

Culver City goals: Santiago 4, Urrutia 4, Dzurec 3, Hummel 3, Ito 3. Exclusions: Santiago 2, Antonio 1, Ito 1. Penalties: Dei 2.