2023-2024 Kai Sports California Hawaii Girls All-America Teams
Thanks again to Kelly Kemp (kaisports@gmail.com) for continuing to do this!
Thanks for posting. Congrats to all athletes!
On the other side, if you want my honest opinion, it is a bit of a strange list. Take the team that you might be familiar the most, Granite Bay HS. They had six (!) girls on the list (on the First Team, Second Team, Fourth Team. Sixth Team, Ninth Team, and again Ninth Team). That GBHS did not win their section in 2023, did not have a single win against a top ten Norcal team, and lost to Northgate, SRV, Clovis East, Clovis, Clovis West, Clovis North, and Davis (twice).
Compare with Miramonte placing five athletes (First Team, again First Team, Fourth Team, Seventh team, Ninth Team), Acalanes placing four athletes (Second Team, Fifth Team, Eighth Team, Tenth Team), Campolindo HS placing four (Second Team, Third Team, Sixth Team, Seventh Team), OLU placing four, Davis placing four, etc, etc.
Hopefully, it might help a bit with recruitment- I do not know how much…
2 Likes
Kai Sports list uses all of the CIF and Hawaii All-Section teams that were put together and spreads them out across each of the 10 teams and Honorable Mentions.
NISCA All-America list is based on who fills out the form as well as this criteria
Those are the only two out there who attempt to do this for Girls…
You should reach out to them and voice your opinion to help improve and make it better.
I know very well how it works. All what I am saying is that in its current form, the list does not mean much, especially on the girls’ side.
For comparison, look at the California Hawaii Boys Teams in 2016, probably the last time Granite Bay had a fantastic team. That team was absolutely stacked with very strong seniors and juniors, with about 12 upperclassmen who were recruited to play water polo in college. The team won the section, beating a strong Davis team, etc, etc. Do you know how many kids they placed on the California Hawaii Teams? Two (2nd and 6th teams). And that was about right…
FYI, Steele should be replaced by Kyla Pranajaya (OLU)
Loren did not play 23-24 High School season, she was already at UCLA for CIF.
Kyla had the best stats in the league, undefeated OLU team in CIF and MVP of the Santa Barbara Tournament.
You have a ton a knowledge and again… I’m sure if you provided feedback to those who put these lists together, it wouldn’t hurt towards making both All-America and… All-Section lists more meaningful.
This is coaches’ job. Others should stay away and provide feedback here if they so desire 
I do not know why so many GB girls got so high in section’s ranking, and, frankly, I do not want to know . What I do know is that GB’s best player should not have been on the Cal-Hawaii First team, no way their talented goalie was a top four at her position in the nation, etc, etc. Does it matter? Probably not. And if anything, there is a silver lining here. Central valley girls rarely play on good teams at JOs and rarely play at excellent hs tournaments. If some of them get extra recognition this way- OK, I can live with it
1 Like
For example, Clovis West Ashley Strickland was ranked higher than National Team member Reece Helsel from Clovis East.
I think that happened because of this
Unless you are specifically talking about SJS (not including Davis) teams, I’d disagree pretty strongly about Central zone kids not playing at a high level. All the Clovis club teams (and Bulldog) and Arroyo Grande have played in platinum level at JOs.
Davis, Clovis teams, and AG are always in the best HS tournaments available during the fall and the ODP zone teams from Central routinely finish in the top 4.
Davis and the Clovis schools have had kids attend all kinds of top colleges as well.
retiredguy,
I am not sure what do you want me to say
Yes, I was talking about SJS, but we can look at the Central Zone in general.
Typically, Central Valley clubs do not play in Platinum, whether you like it or not. For simplicity, I will not touch the 10u girls division (only Platinum division there, and the only Central zone team finished last this year) and 12U Mixed (where SKIP actually finished second), so I will look only at 12U-18U Girls.
Arroyo Grande had only one team in Platinum this year: their 14s. Bulldogs had only one team in Platinum this year: their 18s. Davis had only one team in Platinum this year: their 12s. Clovis had three teams in Platinum: 14s, 16s, and 18s, that finished, correspondingly, 22nd, 15th, and 19th. And that about it, 6 Platinum level appearances out of 23 allocated spots in Championship divisions. No Platinum appearances for AR, Cal Rep, Praetorian, SKIP, Big Valley, etc.
And, of course, there were also 21 allocated spots in the Classic Division, where I do not think that any Central Zone team finished higher than 7th.
44 Central Zone 12U-18U Girls teams went to 2024 JO, only 6 of them played in Platinum. If you want to talk only about Championship teams, we have 6 out of 23, still a pretty low percentage compared to other California zones, no?
And the highest finish for all Central Zone teams? 15th (12U Davis and 16U Clovis). Again, compare with other California zones…
It’s hard to make any list and not raise a bunch of contradicting comments, which is pretty understandable, as these types of lists can be damaging to the kids that don’t make it and the kids that do think this list has some type of importance, especially in college recruiting.
Given the college recruiters invest large amounts of time into understanding these girls over their 4 years of high school (and even longer with the top schools), thus I rely on the recruiting commitments as a good way to gauge the talent pool.
If you take the Juniors in the list, and cross reference the 2025 college commits, you find the top colleges only have a few of their recruits on this list, yet the colleges have recruited the best players in that high school grade. - so the list’s value is questionable.
Also cross referencing to JO’s for validation
18U JO’s 3 of the top 4 teams were SoPac Zone, I am surprised to not see better representation from those schools - Mater Dei, Foothill, Laguna, Newport & Orange Lutheran.
Orange Lutheran (Legacy) got the Bronze playing in JO’s as a High School team without their star player who was on SET, they have only 3 field players in this list, even after being undefeated for CIF Open Division.
Mater Dei win’s 16U JO’s and was runner up to OLU in CIF SS and the older girls get 4th on Socal 18U, and they have 2 players in the list.
It would be nice if we could sync the zones so we could actually play zone vs. zone and have a real High School championship and better data to build this list.
Hi,
You are correct, but need context to understand. Royal 559/Clovis WPC had a ‘split’ you might say. Buchanan HS has become as some referred to as a closed club and only children who go to a feeder school into Buchanan can play on this closed team. Yes, it is Clovis WPC, but only for Buchanan athletes. Clovis WPC has also a set of teams in the 12/14/16/18U, but they do not have the Buchanan kids.
Clovis East children has gone with their coach to Praetorian WPC. That group of children are building Praetorian’s side.
So these changes over the last year have caused the shift downward for the Clovis programs. However, these changes as they are implemented are going to bring stability to the area teams. Yes, they did not do well this year in JO’s, but going forward, you should see the Clovis schools bouncing back up.
Yes, Bulldogs did not have a 16U team this year. Eric Benson is working on this aspect I am sure to resolve this hiccup this year.
Ouch. It is becoming an off-topic quickly. It has not been not my intention to knock on Clovis, or any other Central Valley club for that matter. There are excellent athletes in Central Zone, I know that very well.
OK, let us look at it from a different angle. Zero athletes from Central zone clubs will end on 2024 JO All American lists. And not because nobody is good enough. The problem is that only kids from the top 12 Platinum finishers at JO have a chance, right? Historically, it is quite rare for a Central zone team to finish in the top 12 at Platinum (none achieved it this year), so very few, if any, Central zone girls get on the list. My point is that I do not mind some potential overrepresentation on the California-Hawaii list…
As for Sctrojanje, yes Bulldogs did not have a 16 u team this year, it is true. But they did have, for example, a 14u team. It had some good players, sure, but it was not a Platinum division team by any means, right? And if you look at JO 2023, none of the Bulldog teams (14u, 16u, and 18u) played in Platinum. Namely, 14u finished 12th in Gold, 16u won the Gold division, and 18U finished 16th in Silver. Again, this is not a knock on the talented players and coaches…
P.S. I think I have exhausted my desire to discuss the central zone clubs, ok?
1 Like
The 2024 All America Water Polo lists have been posted…
https://niscaonline.org/index.php/292-2024-all-america-water-polo-lists-have-been-posted
Nice to see these athletes recognized.
Seems to be missing a few key players.
Ryder Dodd, Alex Opera, Will Schneider, Bode Brinkema, Maddox Arlett.
Maybe if they had an 8th team they would be able to make the cut.
2 Likes
Does the NICSA All-America Team require a membership fee?
Seems like lots of deserving athletes have been omitted.
On the other hand, two players from Kearns HS (Utah) made the first team, one made the second, two more made the third and yet two more made the fourth. The entire starting line up of Kearns HS boys varsity team made the top four All American teams. Must be a true powerhouse.
I am sorry, this list is a joke. For example, how the heck does a CIF SS division 2 third place team get 3 guys on this list. Looks like the Ventura coach submitted his names but neither DP or San Marcos submitted theirs. I don’t see the reason for this list, what a waste of time. If you are not going to do it right, don’t do it at all!
1 Like