After KAP7/SoCal this past weekend, the NorCal landscape becomes a bit more clear.
Stanford - Finally back at full strength after a key starter was out with an injury for part of the fall and winter. They are starting to get more consistent with their front court offense and moved up their best B team player a month ago who has quickly carved out a role for himself on this team. Stanford will have beaten all of the best NorCal teams if they win against 680 next futures weekend.
SJX - Have one of the best players in the nation and boy does he draw a lot of attention. Lost to Newport, but won the rest of their games at the SoCal tournament last weekend (Rose Bowl, San Clemente, and Tsunami). They also have a couple kids that counter and shoot the ball pretty well. Thay also have been missing a starter lately and I’m not certain when he will be back. Will be interesting to see how they matchup with CCU next futures weekend.
CCU - This team has some good speed and have a consistent counter attack. I believe they added a center from Davis back in the fall to help with their depth. Last club season this team was mostly underperforming at the start of the year but ended up winning the zone and finishing fourth overall at JO’s. This team will be playing their best ball in the summer. You can never count a program like CCU out!
SHAQ - Good coaching is evident in the way this team plays defense and makes adjustments on offense. Definitely fair to say that it is on brand for how SHAQ plays. They have a big center that has some strong moves and forces a drop most of the time. They lost to CCU by three at the first futures weekend and also beat La Jolla & lost to ORWP by 4 at KAP7 which I feel puts them in the conversation for top 5 in NorCal.
680 - Another program that sticks to their brand and shows up ready to play anybody. Beat La Jolla and Lamo A in shootouts and lost to a short handed North Irvine team by 1 at KAP7. Were relatively unchallenged the first futures weekend, but have a chance to really shake things up when they play Stanford on weekend two.
Lamorinda - Started off slow in the fall but have gotten a lot better since then. Had a big win over Davis at KAP7 and lost in a shootout to 680 which puts them in this conversation. Will be interesting to see if the coaching staff can keep this momentum going and have this squad ready to get back to the zone championship game in June.
Davis - Had a good result the other weekend at Frozen Cup only losing to Stanford by 3 (Stanford was missing their key player mentioned earlier). Another on brand team that can just show up and play. They pushed ORWP to the very end at KAP7 and only lost by 1. SKIP isn’t doing futures so I’m not sure what their talent level is like yet, but Davis is the early favorite to win the Central zone.
Greenwich forcing a shootout against Vanguard, Vanguard had just scored to go up by one with five seconds left in the game and then Greenwich’s best player launches a shot from half and it just happens to go in. Vanguard would prevail in the shootout, but a great game overall.
It was also a surprise seeing CCU beat Don’s… CCU was playing very well and had a consistent counter, Don’s just looked off but certainly have better water polo in them. Great win for CCU!
Vanguard looked the best today, looking forward to tomorrow!
I believe Dons was missing 1-2 players and Stanford was missing 2 players as well this weekend. I think everybody else was at full strength. Awesome weekend of water polo! It just goes to show you that these rankings change by the day, if not the hour!
Tsunami and San Clemente i am going with Tsunami after last weekend’s results but this game will be good. North Irvine might beat CDM, . 908 over Patriot. ORWP over Shores. Most of these games could go either way.
Game of the day was Newport upsetting Socal in a shootout! They got out early to a 3 point lead and then fell behind before tieing it up, and closed it out with great goalie stops and shooting. Newport’s improvement through this year has been impressive.
Mission took the W over Vanguard who played their hearts out but struggled to produce goals against a very strong and dynamic Mission defense. The Mission offense was not as prolific against Vanguard as other games, but to me their speed in the second half scoring on breakaways was impressive, they were even down one kid (only 3 subs).
There are some significant changes that will affect the 12u Division going forward. SOCAL picked up one of Patriot’s best players while losing their best player to Mission, apparently.
Will be interesting to see the impact of the moves.
Socal appeared to not be improving as fast as other teams (evidence would be recent losses over teams they had previously beat).
Mission was already a good12U team but is more always better?
Seems to me that Patriot would be injured by losing a player. Bummer for a program that is always a good 10U program developing early talent.
I do think that Mission takes top spot now on my rankings. Their growth/improvement has outpaced Vanguard who looked to be top talent at their own showcase which Mission was not at. Greenwich and SD Dons would be close right there with Vanguard in 2/3/4 hard to give order to those three. Newport might now be in the top 5 if Socal has indeed lost “their best player” ( not my words). Does that mean perhaps Stanford also moves past Socal? I will be very interested in seeing their next match (Socal vs Stanford). San Clemente has shown they are always looking for a shootout, hope they are on track for locking down a JO qual spot they missed last year. OC Cup could give some indication of the new pecking order if teams show up full strength.
One thing I am curious of. In years past I was under the impression that the best A squads in Platinum/D1 were constructed solely of older kids (12 year olds for 12U). If that was the case in years past, and now there are high level teams with more 11 year olds than was typical is that an indication that things are not healthy for waterpolo in southern California? Is it just that some of these 11 year olds are “extra”? Are there fewer “contender” teams as well which could be another sign of trouble? (seems we have 4 that are up top) Really curious on what the more experienced folks here think. Likely there is always ebb and flow, what is your take?
That is a statistic I track, and although I don’t have data for this year yet, I haven’t seen anything that leads me to believe there has been a drastic change. Last year, SOCAL was playing 10u players on their 12u team. The year before that, fully half of Vanguard’s 12u squad was made up of 11u kids.
Game of the day down south so far was Vanguard vs ORWP. After an early lead Vanguard almost lost to ORWP 12 - 11. Second game against Newport could be an upset!! Hope Vanguard’s coach has a backup clipboard.
