Game to gussied up

Talk about teamwork.

A local salon set up shop at Irvine High School over the weekend, turning the girls’ locker room into a beauty shop.

That way Newport Harbor High School’s water polo team could make it to the Winter Formal in time — and dressed to the nines.

Patty Ashen-Zimmerman, the owner of Shanghai Salon on 17th Street in Costa Mesa, came up with the idea after hearing about the water polo team’s plight: The Sailors had a match at 6 p.m. Friday, and the Winter Formal was at Knott’s Berry Farm at the same time.

Although there was no way the team was going to make it in time for the dinner and the formal’s official photographs, that didn’t mean the girls had to miss out on the dance, said Ashen-Zimmerman, a 1980 Newport Harbor graduate.

“These girls are so dedicated. They’re phenomenal. It’s the least we could do for them,” she said. “They work so hard all year, and then they have to play a match on the night of the Winter Formal? It just wasn’t right. They deserve better.”

And so the salon showed its gratitude, and everything went off without a hitch.

Chairs were brought in and the salon’s staff — all five of them — worked overtime to help the girls, who, fate would have it, won their game.

Not only were irons and blow dryers brought out for the occasion, but a table specifically for nail polishing was set up as well.

The girls may have come into the locker room drenched to the bone, but Nancy Jackson, one of the mothers, said they left looking like the princesses that they are.

“It was great,” said Jackson, whose daughter, Katie, plays on the team. “It seems like everything was against us from the start: the weather, the scheduling. But it all worked out fine.”

One father even pitched in by buying the girls pizza, which they munched on while they were getting beautified for the dance.

“People were walking by the locker room, thinking, ‘What the heck is going on in there?’” Jackson joked.