Team effort lifted Sailors
The atmosphere was electric Saturday night at Woollett Aquatics Center in Irvine.
An overflow crowd watched two Back Bay rivals slugging it out for 28 minutes of water polo in the CIF Southern Section Division 1 championship match.
Only one of the teams got to wear CIF championship T-shirts to school on Monday.
“It’s definitely sunk in a little bit more,” Newport Harbor senior Maddy McLaren said Tuesday. “We wore our shirts on Monday and it was great. People were high-fiving us, showing support. It was really cool.”
The Sailors hung five goals on CdM in the final eight minutes of the game, rallying for a stunning 8-7 victory in the fifth Battle of the Bay matchup of the year.
They scored in myriad ways, from outside shots from McLaren and senior captain Presley Pender to a penalty shot by McLaren, to a power-play strike by Carly Christian.
Pender was not shy about shooting. Just 15 seconds after CdM senior Pippa Saunders scored her second power-play goal of the third quarter, Pender responded with a strike from the perimeter. The goal made it 6-4, CdM, headed into the final quarter, but also gave the Sailors a bit of momentum.
“We couldn’t be timid,” Pender said Tuesday. “We had to take chances. We were down by three goals. It was time for us to take a chance.”
Coach Bill Barnett has called the team the most together he has coached, as far as every girl doing her role. McLaren and Pender both stepped up late, but there were plenty of contributors.
Senior Sophie Leveque scored on a six-on-five in the first quarter. Junior Avery Peterson scored a pair of big goals from the outside, and also had a field block. Junior Elissia Schilling was shut out on the scoreboard, at least partially due to the defense of Saunders and Victoria Pierotti, yet she drew five exclusions. Christian had a goal, a steal and a field block.
It was also Christian’s pass back out to McLaren, after the opening sprint of the fourth quarter, that pulled the Sailors within a goal.
“Within one play, the game was completely different,” McLaren said. “Not only did it give us momentum, but we were taking it from them ... I was surprised she heard me. I was screaming [for the ball], but everyone in the crowd was freaking out because she had that advantage.”
Junior Allyson Hall was a big reason the Sailors were there in the first place, after scoring two goals in the semifinal win over Laguna Beach in overtime. And sophomore goalie Cleo Harrington, who made 11 saves, threw a perfect pass on the counterattack to Christian with just less than four minutes left in the game to earn the penalty shot.
“I was very proud of the girls,” Barnett said. “They played as a team, as they always do. Every player knew exactly what their role was, and they fulfilled that role with great intensity as well.”
The CdM girls had been saying all along that this was their year. The Michigan-bound Pender and the UCLA-bound McLaren had heard it for a while, since they played with the likes of CdM’s Saunders, Diana Murphy (Princeton), Alex Musselman (UCLA) and junior Cassidy Papa in junior polo.
“They were saying since junior polo, ‘Senior year it’s our year,’” Pender said. “Everybody knew ... on paper, they looked like the better team.”
Water polo games are not played on paper, but there’s mutual respect between the two programs. With six NCAA Division I-bound players in the water, it was definitely a high-quality game.
Nothing should be taken away from the Sea Kings, who are still searching for their first CIF Division 1 title but had an amazing season. In a year where there was much parity in Division 1, CdM was ranked No. 1 in the division for all but two weeks.
“They played an amazing game,” said McLaren, who is good friends with several of the Sea Kings players. “It was a great water polo game overall, and it was close the whole time. They shut down our six-on-five completely. They dominated the first three quarters of the game, I think.”
In the fourth quarter, it was just the Sailors’ time to shine.
Twitter: @mjszabo
