Newport Harbor celebrates Bill Barnett Pool on homecoming weekend
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Newport Harbor High School Alumni Association President Sara Joyce Robinson graduated from Newport Harbor in 1997, but in a sense she and her family never really left.
Her father, Joe, was a longtime teacher on campus before retiring in 2022. Her brother, Gary, remains a teacher at the school.
Robinson knows how much aquatics mean to the school. Her contemporaries, athletes like standout Katherine Belden, were among the first girls to be able to play water polo as a CIF Southern Section sport.
“Like a lot of kids in Newport Beach, I learned how to swim in the Newport Harbor High School pool,” Sara Joyce Robinson said. “I have a lot of memories. My very first swimming lessons were in that pool, and in the summers you used to be able to go to a [recreational swim time], pay a dollar and have a great time.”
Friday night’s alumni association tailgate event on the deck of the newly renovated and newly named Bill Barnett Pool, held on homecoming weekend, was a look to the past, present and future of that pool.
After the Sailors aquatics teams were forced to play all road games last school year, the new aquatics facility opened in August. It features myriad upgraded facilities, including a new scoreboard and a new 8-foot deep pool and deck replacement. The project cost just more than $14 million, Newport Mesa Unified School District spokeswoman Annette Franco said.
There’s a Newport Aquatics Legacy Wall, and several impressive new plaques that display the program’s success. That success can’t be told without speaking of the late Barnett, who coached at Newport Harbor for 49 years and died in 2018 after a brief battle with acute leukemia.
Friday night’s tailgate event was followed by the boys’ and girls’ water polo alumni games on Saturday, as well as an official dedication of the complex.
Speakers at the event included three-time Olympic women’s water polo player Kaleigh Gilchrist (Newport Harbor class of 2010), member of the storied 1975 Sailors boys’ water polo team that Barnett coached John Dobrott (class of ‘76) and current coach Ross Sinclair (class of 2003).
Gilchrist detailed how her Sailors rallied from a three-goal deficit to beat Back Bay rival Corona del Mar 6-5 in the 2008 Division 1 title match. Barnett kept up with her career after she graduated, too, when she would play in international tournaments in the middle of the night, Pacific time.
“I’d get out of the pool, and the handful of people that would text me [included] my mom, my dad and an email from ‘Coach B,’” she said. “He just loved water polo that much, that he would stay up until 4 a.m. to watch the USA women’s water polo team compete across the world.”
Barnett, a two-time Olympic head coach, set the standard for success. Newport Harbor boys’ water polo teams have won 15 of the top-division CIF Southern Section titles since Barnett began coaching there in 1966 — a full quarter of them in that time.
The current pool space opened in 1972 and was the first Olympic-size swimming pool on a high school campus in Southern California, Dobrott said. Previously, Newport Harbor had a smaller pool between the two gymnasiums on campus.
The players certainly seem to appreciate the renovated digs.
“I’ve been playing at the old pool since I was like 12, and I’ve been swimming there since I barely could walk,” Sailors senior girls’ water polo player Kylie Robison said in a video presentation played at Friday’s event. “Seeing it is crazy, because it looks so different. There’s a new scoreboard, new locker rooms, new everything. It’s just surreal.”
After the event, the alumni took the short stroll to the homecoming football game on Friday night. Newport Harbor lost 41-14 to Yorba Linda.
The generational magic of the school in general, and particularly the aquatics program, is not lost on the coaching staff. Kevin Potter (class of 2001) has been coaching swimming at his alma mater since 2016.
He is a third-generation Sailor, with his grandparents graduating from the school in the mid-1930s (the school opened in 1930). Potter’s late grandfather Woodrow Hadley was friends with the late Al Irwin (class of 1937), who coached football and water polo at area schools including Newport Harbor, Orange Coast College and UC Irvine.
There’s also a third-generation aquatics player on this year’s boys’ water polo team, Robinson said. Senior Tyler Jameson’s mom Megan swam at Newport Harbor, and Megan’s father Pat Glasgow played water polo at Harbor in the 1960s.
“It’s so cool to see what Ross has done with this program, getting the alumni involved and bringing that tradition back,” Potter said of Sinclair, who has led the Newport Harbor boys’ water polo team to six straight CIF title matches since 2018. The Sailors are also top-seeded in the Open Division playoffs this year.
As for the new Bill Barnett Pool, Potter is happy to see that, too.
“The old bleachers were wooden, and I don’t know how many times they sanded and repainted those things, but I’m sure a few times over the years,” Potter said. “It’s just nice. The whole facility looks nice and state of the art. Nice bathrooms, a nice video scoreboard. The district really treated us well.”
