Newport Harbor girls’ water polo rebounds for third place at Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions
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SANTA BARBARA — The top four girls’ water polo teams in the CIF Southern Section have established themselves as the calendar hits mid-January.
Mater Dei, Oaks Christian, Newport Harbor and Orange Lutheran have all advanced to the semifinals at both the Bill Barnett Holiday Cup and the Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions. These are also the same four teams that advanced to the CIF Southern Section Open Division semifinals last year, with Oaks Christian coming away as champion.
Each of the squads has lost at least once this season, which seems to offer possibilities for the others.
“No one is undefeated,” Newport Harbor sophomore standout Addie Ting said. “It’s super-exciting. It feels like the door is wide open.”
Newport Harbor didn’t let the door hit it on the way out of Santa Barbara High, coming away with a third-place finish Saturday. The Sailors lost to Oaks Christian 10-7 in the semifinals, before topping Orange Lutheran 14-11 in the third-place match. The latter meeting was the teams’ first since the Sailors’ dramatic playoff win at Orange Coast College last year.
Mater Dei repeated as Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions winner Saturday, topping Oaks Christian 10-7 in the title match.
Junior center Gabby Alexson and junior attacker Emerson Mulvey earned all-tournament team honors for the Sailors (16-3) . They combined for five goals in the third-place match, which saw Newport Harbor rally from a two-goal deficit.
“This was definitely a game we wanted to win,” Alexson said. “We’ve never played OLu this season, so it was definitely an opponent that we wanted to get a win against. I think when we were down, we really kept calm. Unlike [the semifinal] game when we kind of broke down, I think we actually came together and made better decisions when we were down.”
Junior Valery Verdugo had a match-high four goals in the victory over Orange Lutheran, three of those coming on penalty shots. Her senior sister, Sophia Verdugo, scored twice, while Olivia Bryant, Madison Mack and Kennedy Fahey also found the back of the net. Senior goalkeeper Sunny Brown made seven saves.
The Sailors led 5-3 at halftime of the semifinal against Oaks Christian, but scored just twice in the second half. The Lions converted six of their 13 power-play chances, while Newport Harbor was scoreless in six attempts with the player advantage.
The Lions made things difficult on Alexson, who was held scoreless, with their zone defense.
“I think that’s something that they’re really good at and they capitalize on that,” she said. “They’re really good at taking away the center play.”
Mulvey led the Newport charge with three goals, with Ting, Bryant, Mack and sophomore center Caroline Daniel adding one goal each. Brown made six saves, including one on a penalty shot.
“We gave up nine exclusions away from the ball, which are unnecessary,” Sailors coach Ross Sinclair said. “We just put too much pressure on our five-man [defense]. Eventually, you give them 13 chances, they’re going to put away a few, and they put away a lot in the second half. We’ve got to get back and fix some of those things up.”
The Sailors have time to do so. In two weeks, they will host the Newport Invitational, their third and final top-level tournament of the regular season.
Asked what the team needed to work on to get better, Mulvey said it’s all about effort.
“Honestly, it’s just grinding it all out every single practice, 100% at all times,” she said. “We just need to go hard every practice, every single second we can get, and really work on our six-on-five, our five-on-six and communicating through everything.”
After beating Los Alamitos 12-2 in the first round of the tournament, the Sailors topped JSerra 15-8 in the quarterfinals Friday at Santa Barbara High. Ting had three goals and three assists, while Bryant, Mack, Fahey, Mulvey and Lily Tomalas scored a pair of goals each.
Bryant, a 6-foot emerging sophomore defender, said the Sailors’ defense was on point in the game.
“It’s really all about committing to the press,” she said. “Then we also have to know when we need to fall back and help. The right time to do that is really important. I felt like we did a really good job of that in that game, and I thought that helped contribute to our win.”
Corona del Mar finishes ninth
Corona del Mar could earn a ninth-place finish at best after a tough overtime loss to JSerra, 10-9, to open the tournament on Friday.
CdM coach Marc Hunt said his team squandered a two-goal lead with 1:35 left in regulation in losing a close game to the Lions. The loss denied the Sea Kings a quarterfinal rematch against Back Bay rival Newport Harbor, after the teams played in the Battle of the Bay match three days earlier.
But CdM (11-6) recovered the rest of the weekend to notch three wins, including Saturday’s 14-7 victory over host Dos Pueblos in the Santa Barbara TOC ninth-place match.
Emma Armen, Grace Henderson and Camryn Spruill led CdM with three goals each in the ninth-place match. Earlier Saturday, Henderson had four goals and Spruill added three in a 10-9 ninth-place semifinal win over Harvard-Westlake.
“[The JSerra loss] put us in that position where we need to win out, and we had some good, consistent play,” Hunt said. “We did what we should have done … It’s good that we’re seeing some positive out of this weekend after getting a tough loss that first game.”
Corona del Mar junior left-handed attacker Morgan Dollander said the team is coming together.
“I think our whole team rallied really well,” Dollander said. “[JSerra] definitely was a tough loss, but I think we came back and we were really driven to win. I mean, we’re all motivated. Everyone on the team wants to make that [CIF Southern Section] Open Division.”
Henderson led with five goals in a 19-8 win over Los Alamitos in the second round, with Spruill adding three. Senior goalkeeper Claire Soiuverville made eight saves.
Aguora 14, Laguna Beach 10: The Breakers closed out their Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions with a defeat on Saturday at San Marcos High.
Earlier in the day, Laguna Beach had topped Santa Barbara by a 13-10 score. Senior Brooke Schneider scored four goals, while junior Elsie Huston, freshman Resi Leverty and junior Rosie Rogers had two goals each.
The Breakers (9-8) finished 3-2 in the tournament overall, rattling off wins against Buena, Temple City and Santa Barbara after losing a play-in game against Alta Loma on Thursday by a 15-12 score.
