Looks like of the teams you mentioned, Greenwich, Channel Islands, and SD Shores made the top platinum groups in 12u Championship. Newport is in the second group of 12 in platinum 12u Championship.
For 18u Championship, the most intriguing groups in my opinion for day two are group N and group T. Jeff has already alluded to the quality of group N with Newport, CCU and Vanguard.
Group T has 3 quality NorCal teams in Stanford, American River, and San Francisco. Two of these teams will be eliminated today. Based on SF’s play against Newport, I’m going to pick them to advance out of their group.
Looks like an East Coast showdown between Greenwich and CT Premier for top 12 in 18u tonight at Stanford.
Predicting the rest of the way:
LA Premier over SOCAL by 2
Newport over Mission Black by 3
CCU over Atherton by 3
Shores over Mission White by 1
CCU over SOCAL by 2
Shores over Mission Black by 1
Newport over CCU by 5
LA Premier over Shores by 2
Newport over LA Premier by 3
I’m sure in 24 hours, this will look completely wrong.
Did a San Diego coach (class of 2024 USAWP hall of fame) really pick up three red cards in three different age groups this tourney? That’s possibly the most embarrassing stat I’ve ever seen. USAWP needs to kick him off the pool deck for the rest of the tourney and maybe longer. Follow Biden’s lead and retire with a shred of dignity.
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And they should remove one of his older age group parents who never shuts up, constantly berating the refs, thinks he is coaching from the stands.
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Was it Bowen? He’s usually pretty loud at his players but not always the refs.
Alex Bowen isn’t a member of the Water Polo Hall of Fame. However, he will be inducted after his playing career is over. Doug Peabody (Bishop’s and San Diego Shores) was inducted into the Hall of Fame earlier this year. If NLM’s report is accurate, the actions NLM describes are an embarrassment for the sport and the club. One would hope the club and/or USA Water Polo will take appropriate action but my guess is they won’t.
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I believe Gibson was referring to Alex’s dad, Rod, who is a longtime Shores 16u head coach.
Interesting over in 14u land…
Del Mar vs. Newport for 1st
Mission vs Channel Islands United for 3rd
Mission and Del Mar had been rotating #1 and 1A all season. Newport shocked Mission in the Semi in a shootout.
I assume that the coach referenced above is from Shores. If so, this is no surprise. That sort of behavior has been going on there for a long time. It starts with some of their coaches, but their parents can be just as bad.
Has anyone considered that the referees involved are too quick on the cards and that they don’t know how to manage coaches? When I moved to San Diego for a number of years, a number of years ago, I was assigned a Bishop’s game. Peabody, thinking I was a new guy tried to pull some stunts, not knowing I’d been reffing in OC and LA for a very long time. He was very quickly set straight on how things were going to go and from that day forward I never had an issue with him.
I’ve known some very insecure referees who hide their lack of game management skills behind cards. In 30 plus years of officiating I gave out maybe three red cards. I know referees who give out three a tournament. I also know of a case where two officials at a JOs had a competition going on for how many red cards they could give out. They thought it was funny. I did not.
I have to presume in the Newport game, Ross was resting some players. SF finished 22nd I believe.
No idea if this is the case, but last year Legacy lost out of the top 12 and 1/4 of their team quit. So maybe the SF add-ons who have no loyalty and have spots in college decided to bail on the rest of the games. SF could have done better with their original team! This is the ugly truth of 18’s super teams.
SF beat AR which finished 9th, but dropped to lower bracket based on goal dif. Both Ohls, Castillo, Appledorn were all in.
Saw the game. They def caught them off guard but, most importantly, the SF goalie was standing on his head stopping everything to keep it close. I am confident that even if Newport lost they would have come back in the tournament and won. Super good team and also won 16’s so could be early fav’s for next year also.
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I can see this going in many directions but here are my predictions:
- SET
- Lamo
- SB 805
- Newport
- Legacy
- SOCAL
- Stanford
- Diablo
This is the first time in Junior Olympics history that the reigning NCAA player of the year and NCAA tournament MVP is playing for one of the teams. Specifically, UCLA’s Lauren Steele is playing for Legacy. She is listed as a field player. I assume this is because the Legacy coaches don’t want to make a switch at goalie this late in the process. It’s probably safe to assume we will never see a situation like this again.
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1 SET
2 Lamo
3 Legacy - if Steele is in goal
4 Newport
5 SB 805
6 SOCAL
7 Diablo
8 Long Beach
SET has the most talented starting field players and their first few off the bench do not drop off much, but Lamo is right up there with them. SET has turned into more of an “All-Star” team, so it will be interesting to see how well they mesh. Newport and Legacy have the advantage of most of their players coming from the same high school and being together year round. Both SB 805 and SOCAL have a very good mix of players and could definitely make it to the semis, but I do not see either winning it all.
It will be interesting to see where and how much Steele plays. She played quite a bit in the field for OLu last year, so it will be interesting to see what Villa decides to do. Legacy has a very good goalie in Pranajaya and Villa may not want to disrupt the chemistry.