Sailors change tuneup

Newport Harbor High lost its football scrimmage on Sept. 4 to Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks, ranked No. 31 in the country in the ESPN RISE preseason poll.

Coach Jeff Brinkley found out about it on the Internet.

Notre Dame opted to play Klein Oak of Spring, Texas on Sept. 7 at the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The game is part of the Kirk Herbstreit Varsity Football Series, which features four games pitting some of the nation’s top high school teams against each other on Labor Day.

“When we saw that they were playing a game on Monday, we go, ‘There’s no way in hell these guys are scrimmaging us on Friday,’ ” Brinkley said of the Knights. “Then we started going to plan B, which was scrambling around trying to find a scrimmage. Luckily, we picked up Troy. We’ll play Troy at home on Sept. 4.

“He’s a really good guy, [Notre Dame Coach] Kevin Rooney. I’ve known him for years. He didn’t do anything intentionally. It slipped his mind and he apologized and everything once I called up there.”

— David Carrillo Peñaloza

Anteaters highly touted

The UC Irvine men’s water polo team is ranked No. 8 in the national preseason poll and has been picked to finish sixth in the rugged Mountain Pacific Sports Federation preseason coaches poll.

Coach Marc Hunt’s Anteaters return their top five scorers and their starting goalkeeper from last season, when they finished 11-15 and were ranked No. 8 in the final national poll.

Junior driver Brandon Johnson led UCI in scoring last year with 68 goals and he ranked second in the MPSF in scoring average at 2.62 goals per game. He was a third-team All-American and earned second-team All-MPSF honors in 2008.

Seniors Greg Enloe and Thomas Kruip scored 52 and 28 goals, respectively, in 2008 while junior Griffin Lerman had 26 and senior James Frank 23.

Junior goalie Matt Johnson, Brandon’s twin brother, recorded 187 saves in 23 starts last year.

Two veteran redshirts return for UCI this season — senior Cole Bielskis, who scored 17 goals in 2007 and junior Kyle Baxter, who had six goals that year.

Junior Kyle Kruip, the twin brother of Thomas, also sat out last season. Kyle Kruip was a two-time, first-team All-American at Golden West College in 2006 and 2007.

Hunt, in his fifth season as head coach, is also looking forward to the addition of redshirt freshman Mihailo Jevtovic, a two-meter player who competed for the Serbian youth national team.

UCI plays host to UCLA in a scrimmage Sept. 5 at noon, followed by the alumni game at 2:30 p.m.

USC, with six first-place votes, tops the MPSF poll, followed by Stanford (three first-place votes), Cal, UCLA, and UC Santa Barbara.

UCI shares the No. 6 spot with Pepperdine.

Long Beach State is eighth and Pacific ninth.

UCI opens the regular season by competing in the Inland Empire Classic, Sept. 12-13 at the University of Redlands.

— From staff reports