2025-2026 12u Boys Club Season

Club - Boys
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Top 20 12u Boys Water Polo Teams
week #40 – eight weeks to JOs

#1 Greenwich – Traveled three thousand miles to San Diego County Cup and beat everyone, including Mission 12u.

#2 Mission WPC – They did lose to Greenwich, but have been playing recently without their biggest scoring threat. This team is going to be terrifying when going into JOs fully healthy.

#3 Vanguard – Dominant over SD Dons but came up short versus Mission in week 5 of Futures.

#4 SD Dons A --Playing shorthanded to the point of having only a single or two subs in recent play, but still landed in second at Sailor’s Cup.

#5 Stanford – Outstanding in week five of Futures and grabbed third at SD County Cup.

#6 North Irvine – Their only loss at SD County Cup was to tournament-winning Greenwich.

#7 CC United – Well balanced, well coached team of kids who all seem to know their roles and are able to attack any weakness in any part of the pool.

#8 San Clemente – Posted losses to Stanford and CCU, but put a beating on Tsunami at SD County Cup.

#9 Tsunami – Have the tools to be formidable. They put a loss on North Irvine at Sailor’s Cup on their way to bronze in 12u, and nearly took out San Clemente earlier this season.

#10 Newport – Looked better at SD County Cup than I’ve seen them all year, and finished just outside the medals at Sailor’s.

#11 San Jose Express – Finished NorCal Futures as the third seed with a tight win over Lamorinda on the final weekend.

#12 Lamorinda – They are a good, well-rounded team, but have been coming up on the wrong end of scores in recent weeks.

#13 CDM – Lost to LJU at SD County Cup only to turn around to defeat the same LJU at Sailor’s.

#14 908 WPC --Lost to SOCAL in week 4 of Futures then beat them by 7 at Sailor’s Cup.

#15 SOCAL --Tenth at SD County Cup and eighth at Sailor’s.

#16 La Jolla United – Had a nice win over CDM but did not have a good Sailor’s Cup.

#17 Rose Bowl – Beat SD Shores by one to hold onto 9th at Sailor’s and 14th at SD County Cup.

#18 SD Dons B – Had a nice win in a close game over Patriot to place 11th at Sailor’s Cup.

#19 Patriot – Looked good at SD County Cup where they finished 8th but bad at Sailor’s.

#20 ORWP – Had a good placing at SD County Cup, but some of the credit for it goes to SDCC doing statistical tiebreakers instead of shootouts or golden goals.

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I think this is accurate at the moment but anything can happen. SPA quals in 2 weeks should be some good games. SPA allocation is 6 right now(last year was 7), 6 of your top 10 are in SPA. Will be interesting to see if those 6 match to your rankings or not. I bet there is at least one team not on this list that wants one of those spots really bad.

Late edit: I took a look at Classic league from last year. 5 of the top 6 spots were SPA teams that were on the bubble to get 7th at SPA quals.

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I’m really looking forward to the next couple weeks. We’ve got CEN (Central California) youngers this weekend, PSW (San Diego) next weekend, then PAC (Bay Area), SPA (Orange and Riverside County), and CST (Greater Los Angeles) in two weeks. No one is able to hide by playing up. In 10u-12u-14u, we get to see what everyone has got.

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Don’t forget about reallocations. Once quals are done, some of these regions (SPA, PSW, etc.) will likely go from 6 to 8 in the Championship.

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(Edited)

2025 SPA seeds were

4 5 6 10 11 12 13 16 26 28 29

2025 SPA placements were

2 3 5 6 7 8 11 16 18 31 33

2 point improvement on average and 4 point improvement of median, and 6 of top 8 finishes (!)

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16th in platinum was a SPA team.

11th was 908 so CST not SPA.

I made a graphic below for people like me that only look at the pictures. :slight_smile:

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6 of @Marco top 10 are SPA teams and 10 of his top 20. If SPA is not allocated significantly more spots for Champion I bet they will dominate Classic like last year taking all three medals.

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The spots are offered on a proportional basis. A zone/team would have to give up a spot in Championship for another zone to get that allocation.

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Stealing @Marco graphic…

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Am curious how that works. Does MDW say “drop 3 of our Championaship spots to classic” which then pushes 3 spots up for other squads?

PAC has 8 at the moment, hope SPA gets at least that many.

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The preliminary allotments are mostly wishful thinking by USA Water Polo. The most telling example is SEZ with their 3 12u slots. SEZ hasn’t sent anyone to compete in 12u Boys for years. In the lead up to reallocation day, the best guideline is the number each zone received the previous year.

This is how it came out last year:

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Could not match your colors, but since I am visual I put the teams in order (except the RR ones are confusing to me)

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Edit: to update graphic.

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Also mapped 2025 JO finish to your current ranking for funsies. As I noted in a previous post, the top spots of Classic got dominated by teams that were on the bubble at SPA JO Quals (4th place was SB 805 which is now Santa Barbara). San Clemente likely would have placed well in Championship Platinum.

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Edit: updated graphic thanks to @H2Opolo2

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Rose Bowl is coastal California not spa. And last year they fielded both of their 12u teams as coed for JOs

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If SPA doesn’t get 9 spots for Championship, the 9 seed from SPA is going to mop the floor in classic. The gap between 9 and 10 in Spa is pretty big.

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It’s generally the case that the top couple of teams in classic could have competed well in the gold division in Championship. It’s the nature of the distribution.

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Which is a shame

Some non SPA team would enjoy medaling in Classic rather than losing for 3+ days in Championship

The SPA team that medals in Classic views it as at best a consolation prize

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Ranking teams across the country for allocations is an impossible task. It seems reasonable to offer all zones an opportunity to compete in championship. Otherwise, If you set expectations of mediocrity, they will rise to meet them. If a team doesn’t want to get a multi-day beatdown, they can request to go to classic. If a team from a stronger zone really wants to qualify for championship, work hard to do so.

We’re talking about teams that might win classic vs. maybe 6th-12th in championship gold division? Watch the difference in the kids’ intensity and emotion in these positions this JOs. Kids love to win a medal, no matter the division.

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There were 10 teams in the top 24 of the SD Cup, and Vanguard wasn’t there. I think whoever the 9th place team from Spa is would have a very good shot at making platinum at JOs.

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PAC and SPA have had 10 and 9 the last two years. I don’t see that changing being the largest two areas after final allocations.

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Does anyone know when the SOPAC schedule will be released?

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