Girls’ Water Polo: Back Bay rivals to meet
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The Corona del Mar and Newport Harbor high school girls’ water polo teams have always been closely related as Back Bay rivals.
Their coaches are, too. CdM Coach Kevin Ricks and Newport Harbor Coach Brian Melstrom, both in their second year in charge, are brothers-in-law.
Ricks’ wife Jenny and Melstrom’s wife Autumn are sisters. For the first time, the brothers-in-law will coach against each other in the postseason, they learned Saturday as CIF playoff brackets were released.
Corona del Mar will play host to Newport Harbor on Wednesday in the first round of the CIF Southern Section Division 1 playoffs.
Top-seeded Laguna Beach (27-0), going for its third Division 1 title in four years, will play host to El Toro (15-11) in the first round Wednesday. Huntington Beach (18-9), meanwhile, travels to Santa Barbara for a Division 1 wild-card game on Tuesday.
Three other local girls’ water polo programs also made the postseason. Estancia (11-6) has a Division 7 first-round match at home against Bell Gardens on Tuesday. Ocean View (19-7) will play host to Villa Park in a Division 3 first-round match Wednesday. And Costa Mesa (14-11) plays at home against Arcadia (17-8) in a Division 6 first-round game on Thursday.
All first-round games are scheduled for 5 p.m.
For Pacific Coast League champion CdM (19-8) and Newport Harbor (13-11), which finished second in the Sunset League, it will be just the second meeting of the season. The first was the Battle of the Bay game, which CdM won, 9-5, on Dec. 23.
Wednesday also will mark the first postseason meeting between the rivals since the Sea Kings beat the Sailors in the 2013 Division 1 title match.
Junior Chloe Harbilas leads CdM in scoring with 77 goals. Harbilas and junior goalie Erin Tharp were both all-tournament team selections at the Irvine Southern California Championships last weekend, where CdM finished a strong sixth place. The Sea Kings finished No. 6 in the final Division 1 poll.
Ricks said he expects a tough game from the Sailors. He knows that’s how the Battle of the Bay usually goes. A win and CdM could have a quarterfinal rematch against No. 3-seeded San Marcos, the team that knocked the Sea Kings out of the playoffs last year.
“They’ve been kind of consistently lurking right around that 8, 9, 10 spot all year,” Ricks said of the Sailors. “They’re right there. They have some really talented kids. Obviously, when you add in it being the second version of the Battle of the Bay… I know the game is going to be real intense. Both sides are going to play really hard, play with a lot of pride and a lot on the line.”
Jessica Lynch, a junior, leads the Sailors with 57 goals this season.
“I thought we were going to play CdM, Foothill or [Orange Lutheran], and I figured it was going to be CdM,” Melstrom said. “I like it, because it’s the Battle of the Bay. It’s a chance for Newport to get a little redemption, maybe knock a CdM team out of the first round of playoffs. That’s almost a bigger win than the Battle of the Bay, if we can pull it off. Playing CdM, we know our girls will be motivated.”
Laguna Beach will be tough for any team to beat. The Breakers, led by senior captains Aria Fischer, Bella Baldridge and Claire Sonne, swept the three major in-season tournaments and have not won any game this season by fewer than five goals.
Fischer, the Olympic gold medalist bound for Stanford, earned Most Outstanding Field Player honors at the SoCal Championships, while junior goalie Thea Walsh was named Most Outstanding Goalie.
Huntington Beach has not had the kind of postseason success that Laguna Beach has enjoyed, or any for that matter. Coach Mark Canner said the Oilers, who finished third in the Sunset League, will be looking for their first CIF win in program history Tuesday in Santa Barbara.
Huntington Beach has had a strong season in tournaments. The Oilers are led by their senior group of Kalista Hyham, Ally Long, Lauren Smith, Bella Vucurevic and Anna Borton.
“We’re just trying to build a program,” Canner said. “CIF is the next tournament we need to improve on.”
The Oilers will come into the game with confidence, as they beat Santa Barbara, 5-2, in the first round of the Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions on Jan. 13.
Ocean View has a tough draw, as the Seahawks will play against the top-ranked team in Division 3, Villa Park, in the first round. But the Seahawks come into the game with momentum after winning their third straight Golden West League championship on Thursday. Ocean View rallied to beat Segerstrom, 7-6, in the championship game of the league tournament.
“They’re a pretty mentally tough group of girls,” Ocean View Coach Melissa Fernandez said. “They don’t get intimidated … If you’re going to win a championship, you’ve got to beat the best teams anyway.”
Fernandez said that the Seahawks’ top scorer Kari Lane and goalie Ieva Vaiciunas, both seniors, have led the team all season. The Seahawks moved up from Division 6 last year to Division 3 this season.
Estancia, the third-place team from the Orange Coast League, is happy to be back in the postseason for the first time in several years. The Eagles, led by sophomore Kaitlyn Chesemore and senior goalie Hannah Smith, are also pleased to play at home in the first round.
Estancia Coach Mitch White said he has brought up four junior varsity players to help with team depth in the postseason.
“The girls are really excited,” White said. “They were hoping for a home game, because they want the school to realize that we do have girls water polo and they’re hoping to get a good crowd out there.”
Costa Mesa Coach Dustin Serrano, whose team finished second in the Orange Coast League, said he was also happy to get a home game in Division 6. Last year, the Mustangs were in Division 1 and had to travel to San Marcos for the first round of the playoffs, losing 15-1.
Mustangs senior goalie Michelle Vu has 257 saves, which ranks fifth in Orange County, and Mesa sophomore Sofia Rice has had a strong season with 67 goals, 62 assists and 60 steals.
Mesa has had a strong season, and ended the regular season ranked No. 6 in Division 6. The Mustangs had one-goal losses earlier this season against Kennedy, seeded No. 3 in Division 6, and No. 4-seeded Garden Grove.
“I personally think we should have won, but we just didn’t play our best that day,” Serrano said. “But I think those hard losses, against two highly ranked teams in our division, I think it toughened our girls up a little bit more mentally.”
Twitter: @mjszabo
