Here are my predictions for the girls’ 16u age group:
- Regency
- SB 805 A
- SD Shores
- Stanford
- Diablo
- Clovis
- SOCAL
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Does anyone here have any explanation for what happened to Vanguard 18u boys? There seemed to be so much potential there?
Warning to the girls parents: The GOLS streaming was unacceptably bad for a paid service.
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Agree. Many parents rely on the service in order to create highlights and 50% of the videos are close to unusable: camera did not follow the game, livestream starts in the middle of the game, camera zooms on the wrong part of the play even for key games at Avery, no audio, no score or shot clock. 50% is too high for such an event and at key games of top 12 teams. Usually GOLS is doing a good job (maybe can improve on resolution) maybe covering 30 pools at the same time comes at the expense of quality. Not great.
For a paid service, the streaming is unacceptable. I understand trying to get people working at every pool is difficult but i popped around several streams and heard kids, with varying degrees of knowledge of the game and of the equipment they were operating.
For 30 or 35 dollars, not good enough
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I think that Regency will take it all in the 16s. I saw them play today and they looked very sharp against Stanford and Lamo. I think that that they will meet up with SB 805 in the finals.
in 18s, I do not think that Steele has played for Legacy so far.
Today’s semifinals:
18u
SET vs. SOCAL
Lamo vs. Legacy
16u
Regency vs. Newport
SB 805 vs. SOCAL
14u
Newport vs. Lamo
Patriot vs. SB 805
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The Top 4 Finishers:
18u
- SET. A dominant performance in the finals against Lamo.
- Lamo
- Legacy
- SOCAL
16u
- Regency. Watch out for Mater Dei during the high school season.
- SB 805
- Newport
- SOCAL
14u
- SB 805
- Newport
- Lamo
- Patriot
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As most did, I expected SET to win the 18U Girls, but I really thought that it was going to be a competitive game with Lamo. The final was 17-8 and it was not even that close. SET had a 9-1 halftime lead.
After last year’s semi-final loss while being the overwhelming favorite to win it all, this is two straight JOs that Lamo has left me scratching my head. Jeff, I would love to get your thoughts on the Lamo girls teams.
In the 18U, Both SET and SOCAL were stacked super teams this year, SOCAL had 3 college girls playing down and SET had top college recruits from all over the country.
Over the years these super teams usually don’t win, getting the team synergy is very hard with so many superstars. Hats off to the SET coaches, I saw them at many games taking notes, building a game plan for each game, it was apparent they were following Ethan’s playbook, they watched the Lamo / Legacy Semi and built a plan to shutdown the very impressive Lamo offense.
Having the play-in games Saturday night for Legacy and Socal, which ended at 8:30pm, with girls not in bed before 10-11pm, and then Semi’s at 7am is another factor to consider, I know SOCAL was up @ 5am, 6 hours of rest is rough on day 4 of a tournament playing when you are 17 years old and playing at the highest levels.
Legacy’s basically OLU High School, some double rostered 16U/18U girls and still managed to beat SOCAL and 805a for the 18U Bronze Medal & 6th in 16U - Pretty Impressive for such a small club, but so much talent in the players and coaches.
2025 CIF Southern Section looks like it will be a fierce battle between Mater Dei and OLU - I can not think of another HighSchool outside of Newport who may upset this, unfortunately with Foothill loosing their talent to MD and Laguna’s rebuilding looks like it will take 2-3 more years to see a Public school competing for the top spot.
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polodad - Yes, SET is very well coached and Damato is always prepared. He has done a great job with both SET and the Laguna high school team. He has had some great assistant coaches, including quite a few Laguna dads. They obviously had a grade gameplan for the championship game, but I was still suprised at how easily they handled a very good Lamo team. Holding them to 1 goal in the first half is amazing.
I agree with you in that it will be Mater Dei, Olu and Newport for the CIF-SS Championship for the forseeable future. Foothill’s transfers are really going to hurt them and Laguna is losing their top player and do not seem to have their typical talent in the pipeline.
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I wanted to give a (small) shoutout to USAWP.
The past 2 years they have attempted to give out-of-California refs more exposure to the highest level by throwing them into platinum level finals games. That was not very successful.
In session 2, as far as I saw, the reffing in the semis and finals was very, very good.
I’ve had my fair share of issues with the officiating, but imo they did a very solid job in session 2.
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Saw this happen at another pool as well (no idea if they were CA or non-CA refs). I get it, water polo is a contact sport and I’ve certainly been subject to numerous deliberate elbows, knees, and nails in my time, but when a kid either has blood streaming down their face or has sunk to the bottom of the pool while play continues, who’s role is it to stop the game? I was told by another coach that it’s generally the coach’s responsibility to request a pause, but in this case you’ve described, that clearly isn’t the recommended approach. So what is the guidance from USAWP on this? Do the refs need to make the call that something is serious enough to warrant stopping play, or does a coach need to request it?
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At a 14u game during second session. The canopy over one bench went airborne. one leg flew over the 8 ft fence. the coach and his girls on the bench had to scramble to get out of the way and a few other coaches from the next game ran over to help. The refs did not even stop the game and there was no advantage to be lost or gained if they would have paused the game for 4 min to get the coach and his bench safe again! Low Class.
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