Newport Beach 12U, 14U girls earn gold at USA Water Polo Junior Olympics
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IRVINE — The Newport Beach Water Polo Club girls dominated the younger age divisions at the USA Water Polo Junior Olympics.
For the second straight year, Newport Beach won three gold medals Tuesday in the top platinum division. This time, after the 10-and-under girls won for the third straight year, the 12s and 14s joined in on the fun.
The Newport Beach 12s Blue squad earned their national title with a hard-fought 10-6 win over Del Mar at the Woollett Aquatics Center. A couple of hours later, the 14s Blue finished a dominant undefeated season with a 19-6 win over Diablo Valley for the gold medal.
Three players — Hattie Doyle, Miller Mesenbrink and Wren Offutt — were double-rostered on both squads.
Offutt earned MVP honors for the 12s at the Junior Olympics, scoring a team-best three goals in the gold medal match and also contributing a pair of field blocks on defense.
Coach Kevin Ricks, who won his third national championship with the Newport 12s, said that Offutt also took on a tough defensive matchup against Del Mar center Meredith Orr.
“That was pretty hard, because she’s a really great player,” Offutt said of guarding Orr, who led Del Mar with three goals. “I just toughened up and just worked my hardest.”
Doyle, Mesenbrink and Emma Blanchette each scored twice for the winners, with Bria Ahmed also scoring. Goalkeeper Leila Meyer made six saves.
Newport Beach led 6-4 after three quarters, but got a couple of big perimeter strikes from Blanchette in the fourth quarter — one with the shot clock running down and one on a power play — to help hold off Del Mar.
“No one else was open, so I was like, ‘OK, I just have to shoot,’” Blanchette said. “Wren has been pushing me to shoot more often. I just don’t want to shoot with 20 seconds on the clock and let my team down.”
Ricks said his team’s games against Del Mar during the season were highly competitive, and the opponents from down south did have a pair of victories over Newport Beach.
“To lose against them two times is like a lesson,” Doyle said. “We learned from that, and we built our way back up. We really worked. If we lose, it doesn’t stop us from winning.”
Back Bay Water Polo Club’s 12U team, coached by CdM coach Marc Hunt, got on the podium with a bronze medal.
Newport 14s dominate the field
Coach Christina O’Beck called this year’s 14s group the hardest working that she has had, as well as the most selfless.
That combination was lethal for opponents.
CeCe Mesenbrink scored six goals as Newport Beach finished off an undefeated season with the dominant victory over Diablo Valley for gold. It’s the second straight national title for the Newport 14s.
Annabel Moala added four goals for Newport Beach, and Alexa Hourigan scored three times. Hourigan, the youngest of four sisters who have played water polo, earned MVP honors.
“Our team is special,” said Hourigan, 14, an incoming freshman at Newport Harbor High. “Our core group is always so close together, and we’re so dominant. We work hard. It’s not like we’re just given stuff. We work hard. Our practices, we work hard. I feel like we grind all the time.”
Layla Head and Clara Carpenter split the goaltending duties for Newport Beach, with Head making eight saves in the first half. Hope Doyle had two goals and three assists, while Reagan Horton also scored twice.
Bryn Madden and Moss Wawrynski also found the back of the net for Newport Beach, which played without standout McKenna Mack. Mack is competing for the U.S. cadet national team at the U16 Championships in Croatia.
Newport Beach was up just 6-4 in the second quarter against Diablo Valley, but ended the game on a 13-2 run.
“I think it’s important for us to stay present, play our own game,” Moala said. “Christina says we’re in our own little bubble. We don’t worry about the people in the stands, we don’t worry about the score early on. We just have to play our own game, and our skill speaks for itself.”
Newport Beach became the first club to win the top-level 10U, 12U and 14U girls’ gold medals at the same Junior Olympics since Laguna Beach in 2017.
That would seem to indicate that the future is going to be bright at Newport Harbor for a long time.
“I think the primary reason why our club is so successful and our program is so special is our unique community,” O’Beck said. “You have a group of coaches, where a lot of them are parents that either played in the program or have kids now in the program, or both. They’re bought in just as much if not more than the kids. That’s why the kids are so bought in, because they’re getting the investment from the coaching.
“They have a great foundation from the beginning, and we’re really, really fortunate for that.”
In other results, the Newport Beach 18U girls earned fourth place after falling 11-10 to Regency in the bronze medal match. Gabby Alexson led with three goals, and Emerson Mulvey scored twice.
It was the third tough loss of the tournament for Newport Beach, which suffered shootout losses to Legacy and Lamorinda in earlier action but still made the semifinals. There, eventual champion Santa Barbara earned a 14-4 victory.
In the 16U field, Resi Leverty helped Mission earn a fourth-place finish. Leverty is an incoming sophomore at Laguna Beach High.
Session 2 of the Junior Olympics, which features the boys’ age divisions, began Thursday in Orange County and runs through Sunday.
