Sunny Brown: Newport Harbor goalkeeper lives up to her name, despite trials
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Sunny Brown said her late mother, Kristin, was always supportive of her water polo career.
The Newport Harbor High senior remembers when she had big shoes to fill as a freshman, stepping into the starting goalkeeper role at Mater Dei. Not only did Kristin Brown travel to the Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions that January to watch her daughter play, but she brought red ponchos for all of the Monarchs’ parents to wear.
“It was just pouring rain and it was so funny,” Brown recalled. “You just look at the stands, and it’s like, all the moms in the crowd are wearing big red ponchos for Mater Dei. So yeah, she was definitely a huge supporter of mine.”
Time moves on. Brown has traded the red for navy blue, transferring to Newport Harbor as a senior this year after not getting much playing time in her sophomore and junior seasons at Mater Dei. Her friendly disposition remains, despite the fact that she has had to grow up quickly to deal with some of the storms of her family’s life.
A few months after that trip up Highway 101 to Santa Barbara, Kristin Brown was gone. She died of cancer in July 2023.
Brown said her mother was first diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma a couple of years earlier. Much of the cancer was gone, but then it came back in her brain and liver.
She keeps the date of her mother’s death — 7/9/23 — on her Instagram page. Kristin Brown left behind her husband, Dave, and three children, Sunny being the middle child.
Kaya Brown, the oldest daughter, played water polo for four years at Mater Dei and now attends USC. Kingston Brown is in eighth grade, and he plays football at the Togethership sports academy in San Clemente.
Her mother’s death affected Sunny Brown profoundly — she said her mentality at practice suffered and so did her playing time, albeit in favor of two standout goalies in their own right. Sophia Bunnell, now playing at the University of Michigan, started for Mater Dei between the pipes in Brown’s sophomore year. Sienna Sorensen, headed to USC, has started last season and this year.
The family dynamics at the Brown household also took some getting used to.
“Now I have my [driver’s] license, but I didn’t have my license at the time, and obviously neither did my brother, so that was a lot for [my dad] to juggle,” Brown said. “I feel like I had to grow up really fast, and I became independent really fast, which it’s a hard thing to go through.
“It’s hard because you never really see your dad weak like that. I feel like I always saw my dad as this, like, big, strong guy, and so to see him go through something like that was kind of a shock to me. It made my healing process a little bit harder, because I kind of had to step up and parent for me and my younger brother, because there was so much on his plate.”
Brown, who has signed with the University of Indiana, has always lived in Newport Beach. She has found supportive teammates in her season with the Sailors.
She already was good friends with Newport Harbor junior center Gabby Alexson, so that made the transfer process a little easier.
“Confidence is everything to me, which is why I love Newport Harbor so much,” Brown said. “My team, my coaches, everyone here has so much belief and confidence and trust in me. And I think that, like when you’re given all of that, it’s really easy to give that out to others. So I mean, it’s a lot of like surrounding yourself around the right people.
“I’ve gone through a lot of hard things in my life, which for most people, it’d be easy to be down and not be like the happiest person. But I feel like it’s really important to learn from those experiences and be grateful for what you do have. I feel like that’s a lot of what I’ve been feeling this year, gratefulness. I’m just so grateful for all the opportunities I’ve gotten that it makes it so much easier to be happy and positive and an outgoing person.”
The Sailors were more than happy to give her a chance. They needed a goalkeeper, as two-year starter Lydia Soderberg graduated.
With Brown, Newport Harbor has had a remarkably consistent season. The Sailors finished top three at each of their in-season tournaments, including winning the title at the Newport Invitational, and advanced to the CIF Southern Section Open Division semifinals.
On Thursday night, Brown returned to play at Mater Dei for the first time, as the Sailors played in the semifinals of the CIF Southern California Regional Division I playoffs.
She has gotten a reputation as a big-time performer, one who excels at blocking five-meter penalty shots. Alexson said she’s seen her friend improve tremendously this season.
Brown’s first name also fits her personality.
“I mean, obviously, she’s lost her mom, and I think it just shows us how much incredible strength that she has,” Alexson said. “A lot of the reason she plays is for her mom. It just proves to all of my teammates how much inner strength Sunny has and how resilient she is. She is like literal sunshine. She is so happy and so positive always, and she is like the glue to our team.”
Brown said she still thinks about her mom all the time. Often when she’s having a bad day, she’ll see a butterfly. She believes in signs like this.
The conversations are more difficult.
“Honestly, I don’t really talk to [my dad] about my mom a lot, just because I can tell that it makes him sad, which is hard,” she said. “And I can tell that my brother’s going through that age where it’s like he really misses her too, but sometimes it’s just hard to have those conversations. But yeah, I don’t really talk about her a lot, if I’m being completely honest. I think about it a lot. I don’t talk about it a lot.”
Brown has let her play do the talking with the Sailors. After her mother died, she said it was tough with no female role model at home and no female coaches. Newport Harbor has a pair of female assistant coaches in alumni Christina O’Beck and Rachel Whitelegge; O’Beck herself lost her father to a brain aneurysm when she was a freshman in high school.
Brown has been given a new beginning in a newly renovated aquatics complex. She regained her mojo.
“I feel like your whole demeanor and personality and everything changes when you have confidence,” she said.
She will soon be back in red at Indiana University. She said a big reason why she wanted to be a Hoosier was the community. There’s a special connection there, too.
Mater Dei senior girls’ water polo player Penny Mauser, Brown’s former high school teammate, is also part of the Indiana recruiting class. Mauser also lost her mother, Christina Mauser, in the January 2020 helicopter crash that killed Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others.
“It’s nice to have somebody who understands what you’re going through,” said Brown, who knows the smile that’s firmly planted on her face is universally understood.
