Boys’ Water Polo: CdM pulls away from Breakers
The Corona del Mar and Laguna Beach high school boys’ water polo teams slugged it out in the first quarter of Thursday night’s South Coast Tournament quarterfinal game, figuratively speaking.
The Sea Kings and Breakers played to a 3-3 tie after the quarter. But, while CdM would go on to score three goals in each of the remaining three quarters as well, the Sea Kings also put the clamps down defensively.
It resulted in a 12-6 CdM win at its home pool. The Sea Kings (3-1) advance to the final eight of the 32-team tournament, and will play No. 2-seeded defending champion Mater Dei in the quarterfinals on Friday at 6 p.m. back at CdM.
“This whole process is a long one,” CdM Coach Barry O’Dea said. “I’d like to see us get off to a little bit of a quicker start, but other than that I think we’re coming along. I’d like to see a little bit more just aggression. Hopefully we have that [Friday] against Mater Dei. We’ll see where we stack up right now, early in the season.”
Indeed, it is especially early in the season for CdM, which is ranked No. 7 in CIF Southern Section Division 1. The Sea Kings did not play in the Santa Barbara Invitational or Elite Eight tournaments unlike many of the other top South Coast Tournament contenders. But O’Dea liked what he saw against Laguna Beach (5-4), the top-ranked team in Division 2.
Senior co-captain Tamir Avital led everyone with four goals, and his fellow senior co-captain Will Rodosky scored three. O’Dea said it was nice to see Rodosky get going, after struggling with his shot in the first couple of games of the season.
Mitchell Cooper and Henry Wilde each scored twice and Will Ueberroth added a goal for CdM, which opened the tournament with a 15-1 win against Capistrano Valley. Matt Moran made seven saves against Laguna Beach.
Larsen McCarroll led the Breakers with three goals. The Breakers’ Colton Gregory scored from center late in the first quarter, giving his team a 3-2 advantage. But Laguna couldn’t score again until late in the third quarter, when McCarroll found the back of the net on a counterattack. By then, host CdM had opened up an 8-3 advantage.
“Our press and our counterattack were what we were focusing on for this game,” O’Dea said. “We just weren’t executing it well in the first quarter, and then we laid into it a little bit in the second and third quarter. It was good.”
Laguna Beach, which opened the tournament with a 13-11 victory against Riverside Poly, will play Santa Barbara at 5 p.m. Friday at CdM in a ninth-place quarterfinal.
Wilde, Will Klein, Hayden Roletter, Alexander Taxman and emerging junior Joe Rosensitto all led CdM with two goals each in the opening win over Capistrano Valley.
No. 3-seeded Huntington Beach and Newport Harbor also advanced to the quarterfinals with wins Thursday night. The Oilers beat The Bishop’s School, 10-3, and will play Foothill in a quarterfinal Friday at 6 p.m. at Foothill High. The Sailors topped Dana Hills, 14-4, and will play top-seeded Harvard-Westlake in a quarterfinal Friday at 6 p.m. at Newport Harbor High.
Newport Harbor Coach Ross Sinclair praised his team defense and counterattack in the win over Dana Hills. The Sailors opened the tournament with a 24-0 win over Long Beach Poly, paced by five goals from Makana Sanita and four from Oscar Goodell.
