White assumes Estancia helm

For the first time in nearly four decades, Estancia High will have a new boys’ water polo head coach this fall.

But the hiring of Mitch White should help ensure a smooth transition.

White, who completed his first year as girls’ head coach this past winter, now has the boys’ job as well, Estancia Athletic Director Nate Goellrich announced Friday.

White will take over for John Carpenter, who is retiring after 37 years at the helm. He has been Carpenter’s assistant and junior varsity coach for the past four years.

“We are excited for Mitch to be the head coach for both our boys’ and girls’ water polo program,” Goellrich said in an email. “Mitch has a great vision to help build our aquatics programs here at Estancia. We feel he is a great fit for our program and [can] help lead the program to greater heights as we transition into the new facility in the upcoming years.”

White, 58, is a Costa Mesa resident and a walk-on coach. He played water polo at Newport Harbor High, where he was a part of Coach Bill Barnett’s 1975 CIF Southern Section Division 4-A championship team as a senior. Nowadays, he’s a retired lifeguard captain for the city of Newport Beach.

“When John brought me in, he was talking about down the road, that he was going to retire,” White said. “I was already kind of prepping for the boys’ position. Then the girls’ position came open, so I took that. Then he just announced for sure he was retiring, and it kind of lined up perfectly. I can get both the boys and the girls on track, kind of matching each other.

“I’m hoping to come in and get both boys’ and girls’ water polo on the same page moving forward, and trying to get a little bit stronger team going out of both sides. With the new pool coming in, I’m hoping to get a lot more interest in the program.”

The new aquatics center at Estancia is likely two to three years away, White said. When it opens, the Eagles will become the fourth of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s four comprehensive high schools with a 50-meter Olympic-size pool.

By then, White said he hopes to have a feeder program in place similar to what Costa Mesa High has with Costa Mesa Aquatics Club, which opened after the Mustangs got their new pool in 2010.

“If you look at the setup for the other local high schools, they all have a club program set up at their pool that feeds their program,” he said. “My son [Cobi] played in a club a while back at UCI, and as soon as the kids became high school age, they transferred to their high school clubs. A lot of his friends went to Corona del Mar and its club. Newport has its club and Costa Mesa has CMAC. We’re looking to do the same thing at Estancia, so that our kids are being fed by our supported club program, not being trained by crosstown coaches.”

Estancia has talent coming back to its boys’ water polo team in the fall, when Cobi White will be a junior and returning team captain Jason Chesemore, a Newport-Mesa Dream Team selection, will be a senior. The Eagles finished 12-18 last season and made their first playoff appearance in five years. They won a CIF Southern Section Division 3 wild-card game at Alhambra Mark Keppel before falling at top-seeded eventual champion Murrieta Valley in the first round.

Mitch White said he expects to stick around as coach for at least six years. His daughter, Sydni, will be a freshman girls’ water polo player next year, and he has another son coming into Estancia two years after that.

“I’m really excited,” he said. “It’s probably the last school in the area where kids are joining the team without much experience at all, basically not even swimming experience. I’ve enjoyed the JV level of teaching kids how to swim, to the point where they can play the game at a level where they’re actually competitive. The last two years for the JV, the boys only lost two games each year, and that was to Costa Mesa and Laguna Beach.

“I’m hoping to take it to the next level, continue with that same group of kids and get them to the varsity level, where they can play and be very competitive with the rest of the teams around the area.”