Boys’ Water Polo: CdM’s season ends

LOS ANGELES — Corona del Mar High senior boys’ water polo player Ben Brooks put his index finger to his lips as the third quarter ended.

Brooks, the defender and co-captain, had just scored from seven meters out at the buzzer, bringing the Sea Kings within a single goal in their CIF Southern Section Division 1 quarterfinal playoff match against No. 4-seeded Loyola.

As Brooks made the motion for “Shh,” the Loyola crowd was indeed silenced.

But only momentarily.

The Cubs came out in a strong press defense to start the fourth and scored four goals in the first four minutes. They were on their way to an 11-9 victory Saturday evening at the USC swim stadium, ending the Sea Kings’ season.

Loyola (24-4) will play top-seeded Mater Dei in the semifinals Wednesday at Irvine’s Woollett Aquatics Center. No. 2-seeded Harvard-Westlake will play No. 3 Huntington Beach in the other semifinal.

CdM (20-9) was looking to be the underdog team to crash the party. But the Sea Kings fell just short, despite outscoring the Cubs over the final three quarters.

“I thought we had a good year,” CdM Coach Barry O’Dea said. “Obviously the boys are going to feel like they’re disappointed, but Division 1 is rough. Three of the four teams in the semis are private schools that have a little bit of an edge in certain areas of open boundaries and so forth. I think the boys should be proud of their efforts all year.”

It was Loyola that had the stronger effort in the first quarter Saturday, opening up a 3-0 lead. Jack Wilson, Miles Schridde and Marko Vavic all scored from inside. The lead became 4-0 early in the second quarter, after Loyola senior Luka Milicevic did the same.

“We have dominant sets, and we also have some guys that do very well on the post-up,” Loyola Coach Erik Healy said. “Any time we didn’t have our main set in, [Milicevic], we wanted to go post-up. We thought that we could take advantage of some of their guys on the outside playing set defense, and it seemed to work out pretty well. They have No. 4, Brooks, who is a big load in two-meter ‘D.’ That one-on-one matchup is going to be tough, but we thought we could maybe expose them a little bit on some of the post-ups.”

CdM did trim the deficit to 4-2, by halftime, as Vincent Ong and Will Rodosky each scored power-play goals. Senior center and co-captain Brendan Hack drew the ejections, totaling four in the game. CdM went two for seven on the power play.

Loyola led 6-3 in the third quarter, but again the Sea Kings chipped away. Hack scored his lone goal from center on Rodosky’s assist with 36 seconds left in the third quarter, making the score 7-5. Then Brooks hit his buzzer-beater, and the Sea Kings seemed to have momentum.

It was short-lived as Loyola upped its intensity. Senior Mac Carey, a lefty, scored two quick goals to open the fourth, the second one on a power play. Then Vavic scored again from center as his dad, USC water polo coach Jovan Vavic, watched from the deck.

“I guess we were expecting them to drop, like they had the rest of the game,” Hack said. “But they just wanted to come out and put a few up quick, so they started pressing. We just weren’t ready for that, right off the bat.”

A CdM miscue seemed to seal the deal. Loyola senior Armen Deirmenjian, whose cap had fallen off, sat in front of the CdM goal. After the Sea Kings got a steal, Deirmenjian grabbed the backward pass and scored the easy goal, giving the Cubs an 11-6 lead with 3:30 left in the game.

“You’ve got a kid without a cap on sitting in front of the goal, and you look back and you see dark and you throw the ball,” O’Dea said. “You see a white cap there, you’re not making that [pass]. We literally gave them a goal right there.”

The Sea Kings got a pair of goals from Rodosky in the closing minutes, and Jon Polos scored with 10 seconds left. But they ran out of time.

Rodosky and Polos each had three goals to lead the way for CdM, and junior goalie Matt Moran had a strong game with nine saves. Rodosky and Foster Hoose each had two steals, while Brooks, Ong and Andres White also recorded a steal.

Carey, Deirmenjian and Vavic each scored two goals for the well-balanced Cubs, and Will Rubschlager made four saves.

For CdM, it marks the end of the season for a remarkable 14-member senior class. Many of them plan to continue their careers in college.

“This is a great, great group of guys,” Brooks said. “The graduating seniors have all played with each other for the past five or six years of our lives. It sucks to go out this way, because we know our potential, and we know that we didn’t play our best game this year. It’s just really hard on us. Right now, it’s hard on us.”

But, with time, perspective may come.

“We had high points and low points of the season,” Hack said. “For the whole year, we knew that in the quarterfinals it was going to be one-goal, two-goal games. That was an emphasis throughout the season, just to be ready for three hard games [in CIF]. We just couldn’t finish this one.

“I wouldn’t look at this as the end, necessarily, but just the beginning of everyone going on to something else.”