Steady CdM hangs 10

CORONA DEL MAR — Each week, Corona del Mar High girls’ water polo coach Aaron Chaney posts a new quote in his team room.

This week’s quote, posted in the upper-right hand corner of the bulletin board, was from 19th century poet Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly into the future; but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.”

It’s a long way of saying the Sea Kings are taking it one game at a time. As cliché or bland as that may sound they are sticking to that credo, even after notching their 10th straight win by beating Montebello, 6-3, in a nonleague game Saturday at CdM.

With a No. 1 ranking in the CIF Southern Section Division I coaches’ poll, that Emerson quote plainly appears to be working for them.

“It’s definitely one game at a time,” said junior Elise Molnar, who scored a goal and had an assist against Montebello. “I mean, our theme ever since winning Santa Barbara [Tournament of Champions] was not to think about Santa Barbara. We had to put it behind us and not think that because we’ve won games, we’ll win the next one. We have to keep it one game at a time.”

Corona del Mar (15-5) started out strong, taking a 2-0 lead after a quarter on goals from juniors Victoria Kennedy and Heather Van Hiel. The Sea Kings would also keep it going.

Van Hiel, who had three steals, scored another counterattack goal early in the second quarter. Then, senior Allison Peotter did the same for a 4-0 lead with 2:22 left in the quarter.

“The girls just countered really hard,” said Chaney, whose team scored three of its six goals on open counterattack looks.

With nine seconds left in the half, Leslee Kaczmarek skipped in a shot from the left to give the surging Sea Kings a 5-0 halftime lead.

CdM was also able to dodge a few bullets in the first half, as No. 7-ranked Montebello (11-9) had at least four shots ricocheted off a bar of the cage in the first half. By the time the Oilers scored their first goal, with junior Lily Martinez connecting on the power play, CdM had a 6-1 lead late in the third quarter.

Montebello Coach David Keys said it would have been a whole different ball game if a couple of those early shots had gone in, but he also credited CdM junior goalie Kate Baldoni for her steady play.

Baldoni finished with a career-high 17 saves and helped hold the Oilers to just two for 11 on their power play.

“We took 31 shots in the game, and that’s a lot of shots, but we just couldn’t convert a lot of those opportunities,” Keys said. “A lot of it is due to their goalie. She’s a really good goalie. She’s the backbone of that defense.”

And, when Baldoni wasn’t making saves, she was pitching the ball ahead to either Van Hiel or Peotter on the counterattack. The sixth and final CdM goal came when Peotter was double-teamed on the counter, but passed to an open Molnar for the score.

“Oh, yeah,” Baldoni said. “When I get the ball, I just look up and see where they are. I know they’re sprinting really hard toward the goal.”

CdM now enters a tough week, with a Pacific Coast League game against University Wednesday and the three-day Irvine Southern California Championships starting Thursday. The Sea Kings, who also have finals next week, will play six games in four days.

“It’s always tough, it’s brutal,” Chaney said. “But that’s why I preach to them one game at a time. I don’t talk to them about winning streaks or anything. I just talk to them about what they need to take care of on every given day.”

Nonleague

Corona del Mar 6, Montebello 3

SCORE BY QUARTERS

M – Martinez 2, Lopez 1. Saves – Connell 5.

CdM – Van Hiel 2, Kennedy 1, Peotter 1, Molnar 1, Kaczmarek 1. Saves – Baldoni 17.

MATT SZABO may be reached at (714) 966-4614 or by e-mail at matthew.szabo@latimes.com.