You think Newport beats North Irvine?
To me, the more interesting question is if Champion’s Cup still imposes an affiliation lock. It used to be the club affiliation of athletes were locked to their club of record starting a week before zone Champion’s Cup Quals and zone JO Quals. The lock stayed in place until the day after Champion’s Cup and Junior Olympics.
There are references to those affiliation locks in many USAWP pages, but if you click on the links provided for more information, the files are 404 or the pages have removed the text detailing affiliation locks. I could find nothing on affiliation locks in the latest version of Conduct of Champions.
In year’s past, the CIU team would have to be the SCAR team. Maybe I missed it, but I don’t know if that is the case any longer. At least initially, it seems USAWP has made changes that lean into the formation of temporary super teams.
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That’s a good point because CIU gold/scar have players from ovac, shores who else?? And I see Ovac is playing gold division
I was told that if a club released the player from affiliation then the player is free to play with which ever club they want. So they might just be doing that.
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Lamo coming strong to beat Dons 11-10 14u
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Although SPA Champion’s Cup Quals is this coming weekend, I’ve heard the clubs for both boy’s teams have been informed they are both going. The game this coming weekend is only for seeding. I didn’t get confirmation on the girls but seeing as SPA girl’s also had only two entries, I think it is a lock both are going.
Can you name the two boys teams competing this weekend?
Mission and North Irvine.
So the finals for EC cup, that’s good both team were the most competitive of the tournament.
Looking at the scores, and trying to do a comparison, it looks like it would be hard to do rankings. Lots of one score games and shootouts. Route 66 with a 1 goal game with mission and 2 score game with CIU is impressive.
Top 20 14u Boys Water Polo Teams
week #8 – forty weeks to JOs
#1 Mission – Loaded with talent and undefeated on the season after beating North Irvine in a shootout at EC Cup.
#2 North Irvine Black – A new coach and a raft of NTSC-level transfers make NI terrifying even before everyone on the team gets used to playing with each other.
#3 Diablo Super-Alliance – Has taken the idea of building a super team and run with it.
#4 Newport – Keeping a very low profile. With Newport’s roster and coach, they could be the best team in the country.
#5 CC United – Lost to Stanford twice this year before thrashing them at EC. CCU’s center-focused offense plays well in Southern California.
#6 Stanford – Has looked competent and well-rounded this year in the games I’ve seen.
#7 SCAR – The starting lineup is basically CIU with a bench packed with CCA’s best. Won the top spot at CCA Champ Cup Quals.
#8 908 WPC – Took on a CCA all-star team at CCA Champ Cup Quals and fought from behind in the fourth quarter to push the contest to a tiebreaker. Not bad.
#9 Vanguard – Following the player defections to North Irvine, I wasn’t sure what to expect out of Vanguard this year, but they showed at EC Cup that rumors of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.
#10 Lamorinda – Beat SD Dons and took Vanguard to a shootout at EC Cup. The play of this team was one of the biggest surprises of the past weekend for me.
#11 SD Dons – Stellar play at times but wildly inconsistent. Has the look of a team still figuring things out. I have confidence this team will figure things out.
#12 680 Drivers – Lost to SD Dons at EC Cup but beat Lamorinda at BAWPL two weeks ago.
#13 Route 66 – Finished 4th at Back to School. Looked solid in the games I’ve seen, but are on the EC scoresheet as only losing to Mission by 1. I didn’t see that game, but wow. Go Route 66!
#14 San Jose Express – Played Lamorinda tough at PAC Champion’s Cup Quals before coming up a couple point shy.
#15 South Coast – Beat La Jolla and SOCAL-Patriots before coming within one of CIU to finish in 10th at EC Cup.
#16 Temple City – Finished 12u 2025 JOs in thirteenth. Didn’t look quite to that level during CCA Champion’s Cup Quals.
#17 SOCAL Patriot – Missing a dominant presence in the middle but Coach Miles has a history of building teams.
#18 La Jolla United – Had a good Sunday at EC Cup where they notched victories over CDM and ORWP.
#19 North Irvine Red – NI has a second entry in the top-20 as Red finished fifth at Back to School and second in EC gold division.
#20 ORWP – Seventh at Back to School and fourteenth at EC Cup. Great to see the ORWP parents at the pool.
Note: There are teams who would have appeared in the top-20 list if not for having players involved in already listed super teams. For example, I didn’t want to list both SCAR and CIU.
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I like the ranking surprise that you put Vanguard that low coming 3rd at EC cup? Lower than Stanford and Scar. Also Dons that scrimmage Newport and SoCal Patriots and actually did a great against both teams.
I could be wrong about both Vanguard and SD Dons.
With Vanguard, I thought they benefitted greatly from kind bracketing. They did beat Stanford in a shootout, but Stanford seemed off this weekend. Stanford beat CCU twice before this weekend, but were no match for CCU at Woollett. Maybe I misjudged Stanford, and the Stanford at Woollett was full strength Stanford. In that case, Vanguard is set to move up.
For the Dons, I don’t count scrimmages. I know they have the players, but I want to see them beat good teams in real tournaments before moving them up.
Ovac came first on gold div, I wonder why you didn’t add them maybe because some player are in Scar team?
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That Stanford Vanguard game was one of the poorest officiated games I’ve seen in a long time. Questionable calls on both sides for sure.
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Stanford was up by 1 and running out the clock for :15 seconds. Then a foul was called with 2 seconds left. Ball back in play clock not running. Game should be over. Ref stops the game and says there should have been a 5 meter :15 seconds ago. In the end Vanguard got five meter and scored and won in a shootout. That was one on many.
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Not to mention having a player reshoot his penalty 3 times in shootouts due to ref timing issues…
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That Diablo-Super team has disbanded for the most part. The team attending champions cup is not the same team that beat CCU and Stanford.
That’s news. What happened? Was the disbanding due to internal issues or external ones?
Not 100% sure, but I’ve heard rumors that two of their starters and one of their first subs are not going to be playing.