Newport Harbor girls’ water polo places third at Newport Invite
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The girls’ water polo season is in the home stretch, and local teams continued jockeying for position over the weekend.
Newport Harbor and Laguna Beach competed at the Newport Invite at Foothill High. The Sailors earned a familiar third-place finish on Saturday as the hosts, while Laguna Beach placed sixth in the eight-team field.
CdM, meanwhile, hosted the Irvine Southern California Championships. The Sea Kings nearly won the title but lost in a nail-biter to Long Beach Wilson.
Newport Harbor (20-5) had consecutive losses for the first time all season, falling to Orange Lutheran in group play and Mater Dei in the Newport Invite semifinals on Saturday morning. But the Sailors were able to finish the tournament strong, pulling away from Oaks Christian for a 12-7 victory in the third-place match.
Kennedy Fahey paced the Sailors with three goals, while Gabby Alexson and Emerson Mulvey each scored twice. Freshman Caroline Daniel also had a strong match with a goal, two steals, plus three ejections and and a penalty shot earned.
“It was a good response after two tough losses,” Sailors coach Ross Sinclair said. “Playing five games in this tournament is tough. The second half, we did a good job of making the right adjustments, executing on offense and playing a little bit better defensively. Overall, it was a good weekend and a good way to finish the tournament.”
Mater Dei went on to win the tournament, beating Orange Lutheran 14-12 in overtime in the title match. The Monarchs won the Bill Barnett Holiday Cup, Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions and Newport Invite this season, becoming the first team to accomplish that feat in the four years that the Newport Invite has been played.
Mater Dei advanced to the final with a 10-7 semifinal win over Newport Harbor, avenging a nonleague loss four days earlier. The Monarchs were one-for-12 on the power play in that match, but on Saturday they converted six power-play opportunities as well as two penalty shots.
Kirra Pantaleon paced the Monarchs with four goals in the semifinal match.
“We weren’t really decisive defensively,” Sinclair said. “You know, you’ve got to be a lot more disciplined. The exclusions that we took were out of character, and those are things that we need to clean up as it gets close to the postseason. Against a team like [Mater Dei] that’s ultra-talented, we’ve got to be a lot better and disciplined in the exclusions that we do take, versus the ones that we took this morning.”
Alexson and Valery Verdugo each scored twice for the Sailors in the loss, with Alexson drawing five ejections. Senior goalkeeper Lydia Soderberg made eight saves.
“I think we were able to stay very positive throughout the weekend, even though we had some big losses,” Verdugo said. “Going into CIF, we definitely have the mentality that we want to win. Over the next few practices and few weeks that we have, we’re just going to give our all.”
Senior Harper Price said there was definitely a desire to do well, especially considering Newport Harbor was hosting the tournament.
“I think since the win against Mater Dei, we’ve played with a lot of confidence,” Price said. “We realized we can do this, we’ve got this. I think that helped us a lot this past weekend.”
Newport Harbor plays at Corona del Mar in the Battle of the Bay rivalry match on Tuesday at 5 p.m., the regular-season finale for both programs. The match will decide the Sunset League title; both teams come in 5-0 in league.
Laguna Beach (13-11) split a pair of matches Saturday at the Newport Invite, but a 7-6 win over Foothill in the fifth-place semifinal was perhaps the Breakers’ biggest win of the year so far.
Senior Presley Jones scored the match-winning goal in the fourth overtime period, putting away a lob on the counterattack.
Laguna Beach scavenged an earlier loss to Foothill and held the Knights scoreless for the final 26-plus minutes of the match, after Foothill took a 6-1 halftime advantage.
“That was honestly probably one of my favorite wins that I’ve been a part of,” said Jones, who scored twice for the Breakers. “We definitely dug ourselves a hole in the first half, but at halftime, the message of the coaching staff was just keep pushing. We know we’re not the deepest team, we don’t have the biggest bench, but we really came out with a new wave of energy in the second half and it really felt like a new game.”
Laguna senior goalkeeper Siena Jumani came up big with 13 saves in the match, including one in the first of two sudden-death overtime periods to keep the team alive. Senior Kara Carver led the squad with three goals and junior Daniela Suh had a counterattack goal late in the third quarter to help start the rally.
Breakers coach Katie Teets said she was very proud of her team, which won despite having three players foul out, including starting set defender Ava Guziak.
“We started off 0-6 and this group was new to each other,” Teets said. “Not new to Laguna, but just filling in places from a huge senior class the year before. We took some time to find our flow together, and I think it’s really paying off now.”
The Breakers fell 15-8 to San Marcos in the tournament fifth-place match, with Jones scoring three goals and Liv Taub adding two more.
Laguna Beach hosts JSerra on Monday for its senior night before participating in the Pacific Coast League tournament beginning Tuesday.
CdM is runner up at Irvine SoCal Championships
Corona del Mar also felt that it exited the weekend with momentum.
The Sea Kings have a new scoreboard on their pool deck, and they spent most of the weekend filling it up.
CdM finished as runner-up at the Irvine Southern California Championships for the second straight year, dropping the title match 7-6 to Long Beach Wilson on Saturday.
CdM (19-6) had a seven-match winning streak snapped. Josie Alaluf led the team with three goals in the title match, and Reagan Weir scored twice.
The Sea Kings led 5-4 going into the final quarter, but the Bruins scored three straight goals, two from Katherine O’Dea. CdM got back within a goal when Didi Evans found Weir with 1:44 to play, but the equalizer didn’t come.
“Our goal was to get to the finals, let’s see if we can get a game against Wilson and we’ll see how the cards fall,” CdM coach Marc Hunt said. “We got what we wanted out of it, in the sense that we got to play the team we wanted to play in a good game that came down to the wire.”
It was the teams’ first matchup of the season.
Weir, Kiana Wells and Keira Bethell each scored three goals for CdM in a 14-7 tournament semifinal win over Alta Loma earlier Saturday.
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