Water Polo: Quite a CdM trio, eh?
Especially in an Olympic year, the opportunity to represent their country is not lost on Corona del Mar High girls’ water polo players Chloe Harbilas, Erin Tharp and Sophie Wallace.
None of them have ever been selected to travel to a tournament through the USA Water Polo Olympic Development Program, and none of them have ever been to Canada.
Harbilas, Tharp and Wallace are checking both things off their list this summer. They’re all part of the 13-player roster for the U.S. women’s cadet national team at the UANA Junior Pan American Championships, a week-long tournament that starts Thursday in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
“I’ve heard it’s cowboy country, like rodeos,” Wallace said of Edmonton. “Maybe we can go see some rodeos.”
To be sure, the focus will be on water polo for the three CdM girls. They want to bring home a gold medal for the team, which is coached by former Olympian Natalie (Golda) Benson.
“I want to go to the tournament and win gold, because we’re gold in everything,” Harbilas said. “The senior team has won gold for the past year in every single [tournament], and last year in Jamaica the cadet team won gold [at the UANA Youth Pan Ams]. We have something to live up to.”
Harbilas, an attacker, and Tharp, a goalie, will both be juniors at CdM. Wallace, also an attacker, will be a sophomore. The Jamaica tournament last year holds special meaning for Harbilas and Tharp, who have been in the ODP pipeline for four years now.
Harbilas and Tharp were alternates for the Cadet travel squad last summer. They didn’t get to make the trip to Jamaica, where recent CdM graduate Heidi Ritner shined as tournament MVP to led Team USA to the gold medal.
The University of Michigan-bound Ritner, who earned Newport-Mesa Dream Team Player of the year honors, is also a goalie. She has trained extensively with Tharp for the last two years at CdM.
“I was really upset,” Tharp said. “I had never really gotten to travel before, and I thought it was a really cool opportunity for me to travel with Heidi. I was pretty upset, but then I thought I should take the opportunity to learn more from that experience.”
She and Harbilas kept working hard. They participated in the national team selection camp, along with Wallace. Harbilas and Tharp were both selected for the U.S. Women’s Youth National Team this year, with Wallace on the Cadet National Team. However, Harbilas and Tharp were pulled down to the Cadet travel roster because they qualify with birthdays in the year 2000.
Juggling water polo and school can be tricky. The team had a training session in Ventura and Santa Barbara from June 20-24, which happened to be finals week at CdM. Harbilas and Tharp went back and forth between the training and taking their finals, while Wallace took her finals the following week.
But the sacrifices were worth it once the three players found out they were headed to Canada.
“I think competing at that high level and standard, going on that travel trip, that we’re going to learn so much more and grow,” Harbilas said. “When we come back to our high school practices, we can share our knowledge and bring up the intensity of practices. This is such a great experience to bond and hopefully win a gold medal together, then to come back to our high school season and bring back all of this competition and intensity. Hopefully, we’ll get our team to the point where we can get in a CIF championship.”
Wallace, who has been in the ODP program for two years, also said she sees the international experience as invaluable.
“Representing Team USA in any way was always just a dream of ours when we were younger,” she said. “Now that’s actually happening, and we’re all, with our best friends in life, getting to go and travel. We’re doing the thing we love and seeing the world. It’s a really good experience.”
The U.S. team is one of five women’s teams competing in Edmonton. Team USA opens against Trinidad and Tobago on Thursday, followed by Canada on Friday, Brazil on Saturday and Puerto Rico on Monday. The semifinals are July 20, with the championship match scheduled for July 21.
Other top talent on Team USA includes incoming junior Noelle Wijnbelt of Foothill High and incoming sophomore Sophie Leggett, who played for Laguna Beach last year but has since transferred to Dos Pueblos. The other goalie besides Tharp on the roster is Georgia Phillips of Clovis North High in Fresno.
“It’s cool to be doing what we love, while traveling with the world with our teammates that we love,” Tharp said. “It’s creating that bond with teammates who you might play with later in high school, or against in high school, maybe even in college.”
Other CdM Aquatics girls’ players are also competing internationally this summer. The rest of the returning high school team, minus incoming senior Jaleh Moaddeli, is playing in the Pan Pacific Youth Water Polo Festival in New Zealand. Moaddeli will compete with the U.S. Women’s Youth National Team at the U.S. Open of Water Polo, which begins Friday.
CdM’s 14-and-under team, which consists of incoming freshmen, has been training in Italy.
“Basically everyone in CdM is being able to travel right now,” Wallace said. “I think it’s just amazing to see everybody get international experience and play in high-level games.”
Winning a gold medal would also be amazing for Harbilas, Tharp and Wallace. They plan to soak in as much as they can during their week-long trip to Canada. They know that now they’re not only representing Corona del Mar, but also Team USA.
“It shows our growth with ODP, starting with just [2016 Olympian] Maddie [Musselman], who was like the CdM face of ODP,” Harbilas said. “Now three girls are on one travel team.”
