Boys’ Water Polo: Oilers, Breakers in final four
Huntington Beach High has never advanced to a CIF Southern Section title game in boys’ water polo.
Nobody said it would be easy. The Oilers’ path through the Division 1 bracket this year has ended up including the two powerhouses who have combined to win the last six Division 1 titles.
No. 3-seeded Huntington Beach won at defending champion Mater Dei, 11-5, in a quarterfinal game on Saturday. Now the Oilers will do battle with No. 2 Harvard-Westlake in the semifinals Wednesday night at 5, at Irvine’s Woollett Aquatics Center.
The other local team still alive in the playoffs is top-seeded Laguna Beach, in Division 2. The Breakers will play against Murrieta Valley in a semifinal game Wednesday night at 6:30, also at Woollett.
Huntington Beach (23-3) will take its third crack at a Harvard-Westlake team that has handed the Oilers two of their three losses this season. The Wolverines (25-2) beat Huntington, 10-3, on Sept. 17 at the Elite Eight tournament hosted by Harvard-Westlake. A week later, Harvard won again, 9-5, to claim the South Coast Tournament title.
But the Oilers, led by team captain Ethan Wojciechowski and fellow seniors Quinten Osborne, Ryan Hurst and goalie Patrick Saunders, come into this matchup with momentum. Since the second loss to Harvard-Westlake, they have rattled off 14 straight wins and captured their third straight Sunset League title.
“We are very excited,” Huntington Beach Coach Sasa Branisavljevic said. “We’ve talked about that game now for a couple of weeks, and we are prepared. Yes, we are very excited. We are ready.”
Junior Jacob Cavano had four goals against Mater Dei and Huntington Beach also played shutdown defense, led by Saunders in the cage with 14 saves. The Oilers held the Monarchs to a single goal in the first half and finished the game limiting them to a one-for-13 showing in power play opportunities.
Harvard-Westlake, led by players like seniors Evan Rosenfeld and Luke Henriksson and junior goalie Sam Krutonog, was the top-ranked team in Division 1 for most of the season and won all three of its in-season tournaments.
But the Wolverines lost to Santa Margarita and ultimately fell from the top spot after losing to top-seeded Loyola in their Mission League finale. The status of senior standout Felix Broznya-Vilim, a center on the U.S. youth national team, continues to be a wild-card. Broznya-Vilim (knee) has not played for Harvard-Westlake since early in the season. Harvard-Westlake Coach Brian Flacks told the Los Angeles Daily News that Broznya-Vilim was day-to-day after the Wolverines’ 7-3 quarterfinal victory over Foothill on Saturday.
Either way, the Oilers are fired up for another chance to beat Harvard-Westlake. The winner plays the winner of the 7 p.m. semifinal between Loyola and Orange Lutheran in the final Saturday.
“I’ve been wanting to play [Harvard-Westlake] again for months now,” Saunders said. “That’s all we’ve been looking forward to.”
Laguna Beach, meanwhile, is coming off an eventful Division 2 quarterfinal game against Hoover on Saturday at Burbank High. Laguna won, 13-11, but the game was ended with 26 seconds left due to unruly behavior. According to an article in the Glendale News-Press, the Hoover fans twice caused the game to be stopped, once because of incessant screaming and again due to physical contact with an official.
Senior co-captain Judge Washer scored four goals for the Breakers, who did not have anyone suspended for Wednesday’s semifinal game.
“I’m incredibly proud of my players for how they reacted in a very hostile environment,” Laguna Beach Coach Trevor Lyle said Tuesday. “They came to the aid of their teammates and protected them, as they should.”
The Breakers (20-9) now can turn their attention to Murrieta Valley (21-9). The teams have met once before this season, the Breakers winning the nonleague game, 10-7, on Oct. 1 at Laguna Beach High.
Camden Benson is the other senior co-captain for the Breakers, who have also received strong play this season from senior goalie Gordon Pike. Junior utility player Sebastian Jacobs and sophomore attacker Colton Gregory lead Laguna Beach in scoring.
“They’re definitely going to be very excited [to play under the lights at Woollett],” Lyle said. “I know they haven’t gotten to enjoy [their CIF run] as much as they should be able to, because of the things that have happened, but they’re very excited to be here at this point. They’ve worked incredibly hard, and this group of guys has been together for a long time. They’re not happy just for themselves, but for each other as a team. They want to go out there and win for each other.”
The other Division 2 semifinal game matches Santa Margarita and Ventura.
