San Marcos girls water polo captured the Channel League Championship with a 10-6 victory over crosstown rival Dos Pueblos on Wednesday at Elings Aquatic Center.
In a matchup of Monday’s regular-season finale, the Royals dominated the majority of Wednesday’s title game and withstood a five-goal fourth quarter from the Chargers to earn the win.
“This is a great group of seniors and a great group of kids,” San Marcos head coach Chuckie Roth said. “I was very proud of my girls. It was great because we were able to get just about everyone in the water to participate, so that was really awesome.
“It’s probably one of my only Channel League championships where at the end all my seniors played in the game, that was really cool.”
The Royals and Chargers will now turn their attention to the CIF-SS playoffs, with the brackets being released on Friday at 2 p.m. San Marcos will likely be slotted into the highly-competitive Open Division.
While the Royals will be competing against the best of the best in the playoffs, Roth remains confident in his squad.
“I do believe they’re warriors and they will metaphorically fight to the death,” Roth said of his team. “I think that when we’re rested, we’re all playing with confidence and on the same page (we can beat anyone).
“I’m hoping the next five or six days provide an opportunity to get on the same page and iron out a couple of things that can make us better.”
Wednesday’s title bout got off to a slow start as Dos Pueblos controlled the pace of play and both defenses held the opposition scoreless for the first half of the opening quarter.
However, San Marcos’ Charlotte Raisin broke the scoreless stretch with an impressive backhand goal to take a 1-0 lead with 3:35 left in the first.
That gave the Royals the spark they needed as Jade Pattison scored off a ricochet less than a minute later before Raisin once again found the back of the cage late in the quarter to give her team a 3-0 lead heading into the second.
After another slow start in the second quarter, Hana Abel got the Chargers on the board at the 3:42 mark with a goal off a missed shot to cut the deficit down to 3-1.
San Marcos quickly regained the momentum as Raisin dished out a no-look pass to Lucy Haaland-Ford, who finished off the highlight play to bring the lead back to three goals.
The pairing connected once again with 19 seconds left in the half as Raisin hit Haaland-Ford on a breakaway to give the Royals a 5-1 lead at halftime.
“[Dos Pueblos] ran some different things at us so we had to adjust,” Roth said. “We did some things well and there were some areas of growth obviously.”
The San Marcos defense continued to suffocate the Chargers in the third, pitching another shutout for the entire quarter while holding Dos Pueblos without a shot on several possessions.
“I thought we were a lot better defensively than we were on Monday,” Roth said. “When our defense is on, we’re really good, and today we defended well.
“Jade Pattison had a lot of big saves there in the second and third. Lucy (Haaland-Ford) went in for a little bit and Bethany (King) was great in the first (at goalkeeper).”
Meanwhile, the Royals offense continued to roll with four goals in the final four minutes of the third to balloon the lead out to 9-1. Raisin scored three of those four goals to cap off her five-goal performance while Bethany King got on the board on a penalty shot.
While San Marcos had control of the game, the Chargers would not go away quietly in the fourth.
Dev Wigo gave her team some momentum early in the quarter with goals on back-to-back possessions to cut the deficit down to 9-3 with 5:16 left on the clock.
Following several failed possessions from both squads, Pattison got on the board once again to make the score 10-3 in favor of the Royals with 2:55 remaining.
The final three minutes of play was all Dos Pueblos, as the home team scored three unanswered goals to finish off the game courtesy of Talia Marshall, Alina King and Abel.
The fourth-quarter push was too little, too late, however, as San Marcos held on for the 10-6 win.
CIF-SS postseason play will begin for both the Royals and the Chargers next week.