Girls’ Water Polo: CdM falls behind
SANTA BARBARA — Traveling up Interstate 405 on a Friday afternoon can be a treacherous undertaking, no matter the destination.
The Corona del Mar High girls’ water polo team set out just after noon Friday for its nonleague game against Santa Barbara San Marcos. The Sea Kings stopped just once, for a bathroom break, yet didn’t complete the 137-mile trek to Santa Barbara High for the 5 p.m. game until around 4:30 p.m.
“We were on the bus coming up here and it was like 4:20,” CdM junior Chloe Harbilas said. “We were like, ‘Our game is at 5, we should be in the water warming up.’ We had to come here and reset, get the nerves out in our warm-up.”
The relatively late arrival pushed the game’s start time back around 15 minutes. The Sea Kings still started slow, and it cost them.
San Marcos, the No. 3-ranked team in CIF Southern Section Division 1, earned an 8-5 victory over the No. 7-ranked Sea Kings.
It was the Royals’ fifth victory over CdM in the last two seasons. San Marcos beat CdM four times last season, including in the quarterfinal round of the Division 1 playoffs.
That game was also at Santa Barbara High, and the score of 8-5 was also the same. On Friday, CdM (11-6) played San Marcos (17-3) even for the final three quarters.
But the Royals took a 4-1 lead after the first quarter. Two of the goals came from freshman left-hander Megan Musick, one on the counterattack and one on a shot from about eight meters with the shot clock running down.
“Letting them jump on us in the first quarter kind of struck down our confidence a little bit, and it was hard to recover from that,” Harbilas said.
CdM was able to hold USC-bound San Marcos senior standout Paige Hauschild scoreless, though she did have six steals, two assists and a pair of field blocks. But Musick hurt the Sea Kings. University of Michigan-bound senior Brittany Prentice, sophomore Fiona Kuesis and junior Piper Smith also scored twice for San Marcos.
“We shut down their best player, and that was a positive for us after this game,” Harbilas said. “If we were going to let people score, it was going to be people that came off the bench or weren’t as experienced as her. We wanted them to beat us. And they did, so I commend them for that.”
Coach Chuckie Roth’s Royals extended to a 5-1 lead late in the first half before CdM responded. Sophomore Sophie Wallace, who also had two assists and two steals, scored as a power play was ending. On the next possession, she fed Harbilas, who scored the second of her game-high three goals from center.
The halftime deficit was just two goals, 5-3, but San Marcos scored three more goals in the third quarter to pull away.
Tough third quarters have been a theme for CdM this season, Wallace said. In the quarterfinals of the Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions, CdM trailed at halftime by just one goal to Mater Dei before the Monarchs rattled off six straight goals.
“That’s definitely the quarter where we lose focus and get frustrated, but I don’t think we lost as much focus during the third quarter [tonight],” Wallace said. “We’ve been trying to use halftime, that five minutes to settle down and regroup, focus not on the past but what’s going to happen.”
Senior Sarah Lawson had two assists and two steals for CdM, and junior keeper Erin Tharp made nine saves and added three steals. The Sea Kings also benefitted from the defense of senior Jaleh Moaddeli on Hauschild, though Hauschild did the same on the other end by holding the George Washington-bound Moaddeli scoreless.
San Marcos has another tough nonleague game Saturday at Santa Barbara High, as it plays against No. 5-ranked Orange Lutheran at 10 a.m. For CdM, it’s back to Pacific Coast League play next week with games Tuesday against Beckman and Wednesday at University.
The last tournament of the regular season, the 32-team Irvine Southern California Championships, starts Thursday. Mater Dei is the top team in CdM’s group, which will play at Corona del Mar High.
At least there won’t be travel up the 405 involved next weekend.
“Certainly coming up here is a challenge,” CdM Coach Kevin Ricks said. “San Marcos is a great team, and you put the travel on top of that, it adds a little wrinkle to it. For us, I think it’s a great experience. And I think that’s the big thing for us moving into the Irvine tournament next week and wrapping up [the regular season], learning from our mistakes and growing.
“What were the mistakes we made in the game today? Can we be a team that grows and adjusts, so the next time we’re playing one of these top teams, those mistakes aren’t happening and we’re taking a step forward? That’s the big thing.”
