Girls’ Water Polo: CdM dominates Round 2 against Newport Harbor
Corona del Mar High girls’ water polo Coach Kevin Ricks sported a pretty formal look on the pool deck Thursday night, with slacks and a shirt and tie underneath his blue jacket.
The reason why was simple. Ricks had to come straight from his job as a math teacher at Our Lady Queen of Angels for CdM’s first game of the Irvine Southern California Championships at 3 p.m. The trip isn’t far, just across the street, but he stayed in the same outfit.
“I just haven’t changed into something more comfortable, and now some of the parents think it’s funny,” Ricks said.
The way CdM played on Thursday at its home pool? Now that’s no laughing matter.
The Sea Kings dominated rival Newport Harbor, taking charge early for a 10-4 victory in the second round of the tournament after beating Villa Park, 16-5, in the opening round. They improved to 2-0 against the rival Sailors this season.
CdM will play No. 3-seeded San Marcos in a tournament quarterfinal at 6 p.m. Friday, also at CdM. The Sea Kings are 0-2 against the Royals this year, having lost to them, 8-4, in the quarterfinals of the Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions and again last week, 10-9 in sudden-death overtime, in a nonleague game.
“The reward for playing great tonight is that we’re going to get to play a bunch of really strong teams in our next three games,” Ricks said. “We’ve got [San Marcos], and two more on Saturday. That’s a great challenge for us, a great opportunity ... [San Marcos is] good, and they’ve got a lot of weapons. We’ll try to slow them down as best as we can, see if we can give them another good game and get on the other side of it this time.”
CdM (15-7) played Friday without senior center and co-captain Bridgett Storm, as it has throughout this week, due to sickness. Ricks said Storm’s status for Friday’s game is questionable. But nearly every other player stepped up for the Sea Kings, who still stormed to a 7-1 halftime advantage.
Junior Jaleh Moaddeli led the way for CdM, with four goals and three assists. She scored all four of her goals in the first half as CdM built the large lead on the Sailors (9-14). Kelly Morgan, Emily Ritner and Sarah Lawson also scored in the first half for the winners.
“I think overall they have better team speed than we do,” Newport Coach Brian Melstrom said. “We just got caught spectating at times in the first quarter. We’re shooting the ball, and there goes the girl. I thought Jaleh came out with a ton of energy and she was really moving down the pool. All of them were.”
Melstrom said he was proud of how his team played in the second half, when it played CdM to a 3-3 score. But the damage was already done. Chloe Harbilas had two goals and a field block for CdM, freshman Sophie Wallace had a goal, an assist and three steals and senior keeper Heidi Ritner made 12 saves.
It was Wallace who earned the starting nod in Storm’s absence, and she responded, collecting all three of her steals in the first quarter.
“I thought she did a real good job of defending one-on-one,” Ricks said. “She got matched up with some pretty tough kids, and I thought she did a good job of staying between them and the goal … I think the big thing was we just talked about the girls being ready to take on new roles, and that changes possession by possession and even quarter by quarter. Jaleh got off to a great start as kind of our center there, and the rest of the game she didn’t do too much from there. But we had ‘Rosie’ [Emily Ritner] posting up and Chloe posting up, and Layne [Anzaldo] coming off the bench as more of a traditional center for us.
“It’s just embracing that role, and knowing that we’re going to make some mistakes, but let’s play as a team. When we do make mistakes, let’s hustle to cover it up and work hard to minimize it.”
The Sea Kings did that overall, in what Ricks called their most complete effort of the season. Sophomore goalie Erin Tharp also came in to make a save late.
Sammie Garcia led Newport Harbor with two goals, one on a penalty shot drawn by sophomore Kaela Whelan, while senior co-captain Katie Kearns and Whelan also scored. The other senior co-captain, Maddy Kanzler, made five saves.
The Sailors beat Long Beach Wilson, 12-3, in the opening round of the tournament. Kearns had four goals, while Sarah Barker and Garcia each scored twice. Quincy Morgan, Josie Miller, Claire Tafoya and Jessica Lynch all scored one each, and Chloe Schilling made two saves.
Newport Harbor will now finish somewhere from ninth to 16th in the 32-team tournament. The Sailors play San Clemente on Friday at 5 p.m. at CdM.
“We’re gaining valuable experience at this level,” Melstrom said. “We’re learning how to communicate out there … there’s going to be a lot of good teams in those brackets. We could get some much-needed redemption on a couple of teams.”
Moaddeli and Wallace each scored a team-high three goals for CdM in the win over Villa Park, and Anzaldo and Emily Ritner scored two. Heidi Ritner had 11 saves, and Tharp added seven.
