CdM goes platinum
SANTA ANA — His nose was bloodied, but the determination of Corona del Mar High incoming senior Jon Polos was not broken Saturday evening.
When Polos took an elbow to the nose early in the second half of CdM Polo’s USA Water Polo Junior Olympics game against Big Valley of Stockton, he still buried the shot from about seven meters at Foothill High.
“It was instantaneous,” Polos said. “It was like, bleeding, catch, shoot, out [of the game]. I think that’s what probably turned on a switch in my head. I just got a little bit angry and said, ‘I’m not losing.’”
Polos quickly exited the game to get the bleeding stopped. When he came back in, he didn’t stop, scoring two more goals and dishing out two assists.
The CdM 18-and-under boys were in the midst of a major run of eight straight goals, turning a 6-6 halftime tie into a big 15-8 win that clinched a berth in the platinum bracket (top 24) at Junior Olympics.
“Jon Polos just said, ‘I’m going to take this game over,’” CdM Coach Barry O’Dea said. “It was pretty awesome. Jon opened everything up by creating some opportunities, and then we just caught fire. Our defense, our shot-blocking … we played a complete game for the first time in a long time.”
Newport Beach Water Polo Club’s 18-and-under boys were unable to join CdM in the platinum division after dropping a 8-8 (4-2 shootout) loss to Stanford “B” at Beckman High. Newport Beach will compete in the gold division (25th-48th place).
CdM went 2-1 on the first day of the four-day tournament, losing to Bruin club of Los Angeles, 10-5, before getting past Viper Pigeon of Texas, 16-2. Making the platinum division was definitely nice for CdM, which is in a three-team platinum pool with SOCAL Black and Team Vegas. CdM will play SOCAL Black at 1 p.m. Sunday at Foothill, and Team Vegas at 4 p.m.
Incoming senior center Brendan Hack scored five goals for CdM against Big Valley, and the speedy Polos scored four. Andres White scored twice while Vincent Ong, Ben Brooks, Will Rodosky and Gabe Dickens all added single goals. Tristin Ospina also played solid at goalie.
Overall, CdM outscored Big Valley, 9-2, in the second half.
“I’m stoked, I’m excited,” Polos said. “That team played toe-to-toe with [No. 4-seeded] Stanford club [before losing 11-9], and we blew them out in the second half. When we start talking, communicating on defense, countering on offense, that’s when we start becoming dangerous … The second half of that game is exactly where we should be, where we can be.”
Polos said toughness is a desired attribute for the team. He mentioned last year’s Newport-Mesa Player of the Year Jack Trush, a program graduate bound for UC Irvine who played for CdM late in the season last year even after breaking his ankle.
“We’re trying to rebuild what we lost last year,” said Polos, who helped CdM make the CIF Southern Section Division 1 semifinals. “It’s going to be fun.”
O’Dea said that CdM has had an up-and-down summer. The coach himself missed a couple of weeks with the team after his wife Sandy gave birth to the family’s third daughter, Greta, in late June.
“It’s growing pains, a little bit, but still positive,” O’Dea said. “We’re not built for JOs [as a high school team]. The big clubs, this is their CIF season.”
While CdM ended Saturday on a positive, Newport Beach could not say the same. Newport led nearly the whole game against Stanford “B,” but came up short in the shootout despite a block from incoming senior goalie Joe Ferraro and goals by Ben Morrison and John Rankin.
Newport Beach went 1-2 on the tournament’s opening day, also defeating Thunder, 13-9, and losing to top-seeded Regency, 17-3. Regency, featuring Mater Dei High players, has eight Newport Beach residents in Spencer Carroll, Ford Secrist, Matthew Brennan, Will Lapkin, Bennie Seybold, Ben Teitscheid, Jackson Seybold and Luke Wyatt.
Ferraro played well against Stanford “B” with 10 saves and two steals, while Morrison had three goals and two steals and Nic Rimlinger had two goals and two field blocks. Cole Brosnan had a goal and two assists, and Jason Grew and Jackson Westerman (four exclusions drawn) also scored.
But Newport Coach Ross Sinclair, in his first year of leading his alma mater, was not happy after his team gave up a 6-3 lead early in the second half. The first adjective he used to describe the game was “awful.”
“It’s unfortunate to see after we put so much effort into the summer and worked really hard,” Sinclair said. “We had a great weekend last weekend [finishing eighth in the California High School State Championships]. It’s disappointing. We knew what was on the line, and a two-goal lead is apparently the best lead in the world. We stop playing once we go up two, and it bit us in the butt here. Unfortunately, we didn’t have anyone step up.”
Newport Beach is young, with just two incoming seniors in Ferraro and Morrison on the roster. But Sinclair does not want to hear that.
“It’s not an excuse when these kids have been around the game since they were 9 years old, playing together for so long,” he said. “Young is no excuse. Look at the national team, look at the women’s national team, they’ve got a bunch of kids on the team and they’re winning gold medals left, right and center. It’s a matter of putting in hard work, and then having it translate into the game. Right now, we’re working hard, but it doesn’t give us the confidence that we should be playing with. That game just showed it right there.”
Newport Beach’s 18Us will play in a gold division game at noon Sunday at Capistrano Valley High.
