Newport’s eight help Regency take third

IRVINE — No. 3 was the number the Regency Water Polo Club aimed for, as in claiming three straight titles in the under-18 boys’ championship division at the USA Water Polo Junior Olympics.

Regency wound up with a different No. 3, as in third place.

Eight Newport Beach residents competed for top-seeded Regency, which featured current and former Mater Dei players, and they settled for the bronze medal at the four-day national tournament, topping No. 4 Stanford A, 13-10, at the Woollett Aquatics Center in Irvine on Tuesday.

Out of the locals, Will Lapkin led the way with a four-goal performance, matching the team’s best individual total. Jackson Seybold scored a goal in each of the first three periods, and Lucas Wyatt’s lone goal proved to a crucial one with about two minutes left, securing Regency’s third-place result.

Afterward, Regency, which went 6-2 during the tournament, walked to the other pool to watch the final between the No. 2 Santa Barbara Polo Pals and No. 13 Los Angeles Premier. Those two teams were the only ones to down Regency in the tournament.

Watching the championship, which the Santa Barbara Polo Pals won, 7-6, from the pool deck wasn’t easy for Regency. The tournament took place in the backyard of the eight players from Newport Beach, Lapkin, Seybold, Wyatt, Spencer Carroll, Ford Secrist, Matthew Brennan, Bennie Seybold and Ben Teitscheid. All of those players will play for Mater Dei in the fall, except for Carroll, who is heading to Brown.

“It would’ve been nice to play a championship here,” said Wyatt, an incoming senior at Mater Dei. “It’s always part of a Regency club to just, you know, get to the championship and hopefully get that first place. Getting bronze isn’t the best, but we played good the last game, so I’m proud of our team.”

Regency bounced back from its 15-8 setback to the Santa Barbara Polo Pals in the semifinals earlier in the day. The loss dropped Regency into the third--place game, and it started well against Stanford A, jumping to a 2-0 lead on goals by Thomas Dunstan and Jackson Seybold, a future sophomore at Mater Dei.

Stanford A evened things up on two power-play goals during a 59-second span midway through the opening quarter. William Conner scored the first of his game-high five goals and Michael Swart his first of two goals.

Lapkin broke the tie with 1 1/2 minutes left in the first quarter, sneaking in a shot from the left side past goalie Benoit Viollier, who couldn’t protect the near post. Conner tied it up with a goal from outside the five-meter mark with 5:58 to go in the second quarter, and that would be the last time things were even.

Seybold and Lapkin found the back of the net and Regency went into halftime up, 5-4.

Regency pushed the lead to 7-4 with goals by Lapkin and Seybold in the first 85 seconds of the second half. Nevertheless, Stanford A kept inching closer, cutting the deficit to one four times, on third-quarter goals by Jacob Pickard and Swart, and two fourth-quarter goals by Conner.

Twenty-four seconds after Conner’s skip shot got past goalie Nolan Strout and trimmed Regency’s advantage to 11-10, Wyatt delivered for Regency. Seybold found Wyatt, who put away his left-handed shot to put Regency back up two with 2:05 left.

“Jackson Seybold gave me a perfect pass. It was pretty easy to finish,” Wyatt said. “Just glad we got the win there.”

Ending the tournament on a high note was big for Bennie Seybold and Lapkin, who are both incoming seniors. The two said the team broke down against the Santa Barbara Polo Pals, which featured UC Berkeley incoming freshman Johnny Hooper, a recent Studio City Harvard-Westlake graduate who helped his school beat Mater Dei in the CIF Southern Section Division 1 final in each of the past two years at Woollett Aquatics Center. Mater Dei reached the section finale for the fifth straight year, winning it from 2010-12.

“I just don’t think we prepared well enough,” Lapkin said of the semifinal. “We came out and we weren’t ready and they brought it to us. [The Santa Barbara Polo Pals’ players are] pretty much … from all over the place. We knew they were going to be pretty talented, but we thought we could handle it and we [couldn’t].

“We might not have done as well as we should have, but we pulled through and won our last game.”