Last season, Santa Barbara High girls water polo had its season come to an end early in the CIF-SS Div. 3 playoffs. After an off-season of development and a strong regular season for the youthful program, the Dons punched their ticket to the CIF-SS Div. 2 championship on Wednesday.
A stellar defensive effort lifted Santa Barbara High to an 8-6 victory over Murrieta Valley in the CIF-SS D2 Semifinals on the Santa Barbara pool deck.
“It’s been pretty crazy. When we started the year, that wasn’t really even in our thoughts,” Santa Barbara High head coach Mark Walsh said of the title run. “We were in D3 last year and got knocked out pretty early, so we weren’t thinking championships at this time last year or even at the start of this year
“This team’s really molded together. It’s a small group… They’ve all really developed their roles and learned to play well with each other. We’re just such a different team.”
The Dons, the No. 1 seed, will now clash with No. 2 seed La Serna for the D2 title on Saturday at Mt. San Antonio College. The two teams met once in the regular season, where La Serna earned a 15-12 win.
“[La Serna] is very balanced,” Walsh said. “They’ve got kind of everything you’d want in a team. We’ll look at the film again and see some things that we can do a little better. It’ll be a challenge.”
It was a defensive slugfest out of the gate, as both sides stood tall and the game remained scoreless for the first three minutes of play.
However, Murrieta Valley broke that trend with back-to-back 5-meter penalty goals on ensuing possessions to take an early 2-0 lead.
The Dons quickly responded by cutting the deficit in half when Yesenia Dunn found Luna Morancey for the score.
After some more back-and-forth defensive action, Murrieta Valley scored in the final minute and Violette Bailey punched right back for SB with a goal to give the visitors a 3-2 lead heading into the second.
“We had about the worst start you could ever have,” Walsh said of the early deficit. “Luckily, we were able to keep it close and they didn’t completely blow us out in that quarter. The fact that we were still in the game gave us some confidence that we would be okay after that.”
The Dons carried that momentum into the second, as a Bailey steal led to a goal by Rose Nelley to even the score at 3-3 with 5:05 left in the half.
After another long scoring drought from both sides, Santa Barbara’s Jules Horton gave her team its first lead of the day at 4-3 with an inside goal at the 2:49 mark.
The Dons’ defense continued to stifle the Nighthawks in the second quarter, and Horton scored on an outside shot in the final seconds of the half to take a 5-3 lead into halftime.
Murrieta Valley opened up the second-half scoring to cut the SB lead down to 5-4 with 5:38 left in the third. However, the Santa Barbara defense then locked in and didn’t allow another Nighthawk goal until there was 2:14 left in the final quarter.
“Defensively, we were really good, we took away their main options,” Walsh said. “We were battling a lot, and it was a lot of two strong girls battling with a lot of white water and stuff going on.
“I was really proud of the girls for continuing to battle, goalie (Sasha Jones) made some great saves and we had a bunch of field blocks in some key moments to keep us in the lead.”
While Murrieta Valley was the first to score in the third, the Dons got the last laugh as Morancey responded with two unanswered goals to grow the lead to 7-4 heading into the final quarter.
Santa Barbara High controlled the clock for the majority of the fourth, as that score held until there were less than three minutes on the clock when Bailey scored to extend the advantage to 8-4.
The Nighthawks quickly responded with a goal of their own, but the clock was not on their side. The Dons continued to milk the final seconds off the clock, and Murrieta Valley scored once more, but it was too little, too late as SB clinched a spot in the CIF championship.