Senior Nollan Is Mira Costa’s Water Pistol : Preps: After disappointing conclusion to 1992 season, the coach’s son dedicated the off-season to improving his game. He leads the team with 55 goals in 20 matches.

Hours after he stopped crying, Sean Nollan sat in his living room with his father Mike. It was late at night, but sleep was out of the question.

They just sat there. Sean, a junior and the best player on the 1992 Mira Costa High water polo team that finished 25-6. Mike, the team’s coach. They thought about how they let a 5-3 halftime lead evaporate into an 11-6 loss to eventual champion Costa Mesa in the Southern Section Division III semifinals.

Suddenly, Sean remembered. He had another season left. Another chance.

“What do I do now to be better?” he asked his coach.

“Play club ball,” Mike said.

In January, Sean, 17, joined the club league at Harvard-Westlake High in North Hollywood. For four months, every Saturday and Sunday, Sean played with and against top-notch players. Most were college players.

“That was like a whole year’s experience for him,” said Mike, 51, who has coached the Mustangs since 1982.

The work has paid off. Sean leads Mira Costa with 55 goals in 20 games. He had two goals Tuesday to help the Mustangs, ranked sixth in Division III, improve to 16-6 and 8-0 in the Ocean League with a 9-8 victory over Beverly Hills. Mira Costa plays Peninsula (17-5, 7-1) at 4 p.m. today at Miraleste Intermediate in a game that will likely decide the Ocean title.

Nollan is a standout, but when he joined the varsity team as a sophomore, the 6-foot-1, 170-pound senior feared standing out among his teammates. After all, he was the coach’s son.

“When I first started I was real worried about that,” Sean said. “I felt everyone expected me to be great off the bat. I didn’t want to be looked at as the coach’s son that couldn’t do anything. I wanted to be a player. That also made me want to work hard.”

When asked if their coach is easier on Sean, his teammates laughed.

“In some ways, the coach probably treats him harder than the other players,” senior starter Paul Barr said. “At times he gets yelled at more. It puts more pressure on (Sean). It seems like someone’s always looking over your shoulder.”

There are advantages, Sean said, to having your father as coach.

“I know what he wants me to work on,” he said.

But frustrations arise and you can’t go home and complain to your father about the coach.

“He tries to point out everything wrong with all the players,” Sean said. “But after you’ve heard it enough times, it gets a little bit nagging.”

Mike, who teaches math at Inglewood High, said he never urged Sean to play water polo.

“I wanted him, if possible, to be interested in athletics, but I didn’t want to push him,” he said. “I had seen things I really didn’t like with parents pushing their kids.

“When he was ready to go to Mira Costa as a freshman, he said he wanted to try water polo. That was the first he had ever done it. He dropped taking karate and played water polo as a freshman. He wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t real good.”

After the season, Sean went to a one-hour weightlifting class at 6 a.m. three days a week. After each session he would swim a mile. Then he would go to class. He continues the routine today.

Sean has spoken to many Division I college coaches about playing next season. He is still hoping for a scholarship offer.

If one doesn’t come, Sean said he will probably play at a community college.

“I’ll be disappointed,” he said.

Mike played goalie for USC’s water polo team from 1960-63, starting three seasons. He came out of Morningside High, where he was on the Monarchs’ first water polo team as a junior.

His coach at Morningside did it by the book.

“Our coach had never seen a water polo game,” Mike recalled. “At the end of my sophomore year, he said we’re going to go to Lynwood to watch a thing called water polo. I had never seen a water polo game in my life.

“We came back next fall and he had a book, ‘How to Play Water Polo’ by some Hungarian guy. He sat there and read the book and told us what to do. By the next year, we got to the semifinals of the (Southern Section playoffs).”

Without a book, Mike coached Inglewood High from 1966-74. He became a referee in 1975, lasting only one season because he buckled under fan criticism. He moved on to coach at Aviation High until it closed in 1982.

He has never reached a section final at Mira Costa, but believes it could happen this year.

Beverly Hills Coach Todd Irmas isn’t so sure.

“I thought Costa was better last year,” Irmas said. “But he has a shot at it.”

The Mustangs defeated Beverly Hills, 13-11, in the final of the South Bay tournament on Oct. 2. Sean dominated the game with seven goals.

“It’s hard to shut down a great player,” Irmas said. “I like to think we have a good defense, but if he gets on a one-on-one situation, he’ll take them to school.”

Sean’s two brothers, Andrew, 9, and Christopher, 7, are just learning to swim. His mother Phyllis, a teacher at Riviera Hall in Redondo Beach, and Mike, agree they will not pressure their younger sons to play water polo.

They realized that, at first, Sean didn’t even like it.

“I remember when I was young, I used to watch it and I was bored,” Sean said. “I’d bring friends and we’d go outside to play.”

Now, he can’t get enough of it.