Agree…clearly No one checked that there was a huge band and flags competition at Granada this weekend leading to no parking and a mile walk from the streets and neighborhoods.
Absolutely insane that USAWP and vendors cant figure the easy stuff out…just need a little fore planning and not showing up the day of and saying “oh well…we tried.”
Remember that this is a development program and a chance for national team coaches to see the players.
Results and spectator experiences are a far secondary concern I would assume.
ODP is about excellence including the small details. In particular, after a long journey to get to this point, the $ the traveling, revenue to USAWP, and many of us are big supporters of USAWP. It is not that hard to have good stat, 6-8 and gols experience during this tourney is 5/10 at best. Also on the technical side, some of the pools are too warm. The most frustrating aspect is that this feedback is going tot he ether instead of helping USAWP to continuously improve.
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That’s one way to look at it, wpfan1. Another way is to recognize that it’s not difficult to achieve both objectives. That is, provide national team coaches an opportunity to evaluate players and provide timely results and a better spectator experience. The better high school tournaments do both every year.
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Parents spend a ton of money on qualifiers, regionals, then this national weekend, and then NTSC. It is more than reasonable to expect things to be well run.
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Any feedback on the games or the kids? Anyone really doing well or maybe disappointing?
Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on the weekend, and how they thought it went?
USAWP Instagram post of the medalists
Youth:
1st SPA Red
2nd PAC Red
3rd CST Red
Cadet:
1st PSW Red
2nd CST Red
3rd SPA Red
Development:
1st CST Red
2nd SPA Red
3rd PAC Red
Jeff’s top 4 in youth finished as predicted
What a weekend of polo! Really appreciate the MVP of this site - Jeff! - and how he helps contextualize what we are seeing and hearing.
Also, props to NEZ Youth for finishing 5th. Jeff was spot on in his breakdown but they outperformed his predictions 
- a goal away from being top four:
“8. NEZ. One of the two youngest teams in my top 8, with no Class of 2025 players, four Class of 2027 players, and one Class of 2028 player. Seven of NEZ’s top 9 or 10 players play for Greenwich Aquatics and will play for Brunswick in the fall, including goalie Jack Lindberg, attacker/center defender Callum Walker, LH center Peter Saunders (Class of 2027), utility player Neveh Yechiely, and Jackson Shaw (Class of 2028). Shaw is one of the best freshmen in the country. James Faulhaber (Phillips Exeter Class of 2026 and LA Premier) is a solid center. NEZ could finish anywhere from 6th through 8th.”
Of course, some things could’ve been better with this tournament, but don’t want to focus on that. At the end of the day, a great celebration of the sport at the age group level in the US.
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I would add NEZ Development, who did finish top-4, to the props list. Their game versus PSW Red might have been the best game I watched this weekend.
In recent years, I’ve seen Greenwich slipping down the JO final placements list in the lower age groups and wondered if water polo was burning out in NEZ. This weekend proved water polo is alive and well. They have rebuilt. NEZ Dev came in seeded 8th and left with the four slot, above PSW.
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Having watched both the Cadet semifinals and Cadet 3rd place and 1st place games, this is my personal opinion of each team. (I have listed some players with their HS and some with just the club. Unfortunately I do not know everyone’s HS and if I make a mistake please correct me!)
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PSW Red: They were led mostly by three standout Del Mar players: Aiden Shin (Bishops, 2028), Grayson Taylor (Cathedral Catholic High School, 2028), and Hanrui Liu (Bishops, 2028). This team had lots of talent and in my opinion was favored to win the tournament. Their semifinal win was a thriller against SPA Red as they won in golden goal tying the game at the buzzer after a ball under with six seconds left. After going down in the first two quarters in their gold medal match, they managed to rally back and win. Some other key players were Max Bruhn (Del Mar WPC, CCHS, 2028), Liam Zarcu (SD Shore, Class of 2029), and Calvin Lubsen (SD Shore, Bishops, 2028).
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CST Red: They seemed to have broken their team up more evenly then all of the other teams with standout players such as Austin Miller (Trojan Water Polo Club, 2027), Channing Wigo (CIU, Class of 2029), and Kaan Avcibasioglu (Pride Water Polo Acadamy, Oaks Christian, 2028) and and had they put together a more “true” a-team then they may have won the entire tournament. That’s not to say that their actual a-team did not have lots of talent, evidenced by them coming in second. This team may have been the deepest with many standout players such as: Harry Siafaris (LA Premier, Harvard-Westlake, 2027), Fernando Rejon (SD Shore, 2027), Christian Yonker (CIU, 2027), and Francesco Pintaric (Trojan, 2029). They also won their semi-final in a thriller winning against PAC Red. They were up most of the game, but were able to hold on in golden-goal against after a late push by PAC. They were similarly up against PSW however were not able to hold on to their lead ultimately falling in the gold-medal game.
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SPA Red: I may not be the biggest fan of Mission, but I will say that they have some really talented players. I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical with 6 of the 14 players on this team being from Mission (with the SPA coach also being affiliated with Mission) however, each player proved that they should be their and in my opinion deserve to make it to NTSC. Now that I am done with my little Mission rant
lets move on.
I firmly believe that SPA had the most attacker and center defender depth, however they did not have a single listed center. This did not seem to matter however as they played a motion run and gun kind of offense. They were led by Andrew Schneider (Mission, Jserra, 2028, Lefty) and Dylan Park (Mission, Jserra 2028) who both seemed to be their main sources of offense. Other standouts were Tanner Gorman (SOCAL, Santa Margarita, 2028), Asa Chen (Monarchy, Mater Dei, 2027), Lars Knepper (Mission, Jserra 2028), and Ronan Keane (North Irvine, 2028). SPA lost to PSW after leading almost the entire game and had a one goal advantage with 28 seconds left after a great shot from Ronan Keane. However with 28 seconds left, PSW was able to tie the game with a goal from Grayson Taylor after a broken play that resulted in a ball under and turnover against SPA. However they were able to bounce back and win the bronze against PAC with a comfortable win after having lost to them in the showcase game.
- PAC Red: Had this team not played Braden Hassett and Nathan Greenberg up in Youth I strongly believe that this team would have dominated the tournament. However, this team still had plenty of talent and was still able to come in at a respectable 4th place. Some of their standout players were Hunter Coleman (Stanford WPC, Menlo HS, 2028), Cade O’Hare (CC United, 2027), and Mason Tunney (CC United, 2028, Lefty). Hunter Coleman is widely considered the best center prospect since Ben Hallock and showed it scoring 6 goals against CST in the semi-final almost completing a comeback win to move on. However during the third place match, he was held to two goals by SPA’s Lars Knepper, scoring only on a five-meter and a garbage time goal with 10 seconds left and SPA up by 4.
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With an eye towards the Futures League Super Finals, Junior Olympics, and 2025 high school season, here are a few observations about last weekend’s ODP national championship tournament.
First, hats off to the Northeast Zone (NEZ) for finishing 4th in the Development Tournament and 5th in the Youth Tournament and to the Southwest Zone (SWZ) for finishing in the top 8 in the Development Tournament.
For what it’s worth, I ranked the ODP Zones based upon their performance in this year’s national tournament. Specifically, I gave 8 points to the zone that finished first in an age group, 7 points to the zone that finished second, and so on down to one point for the zone that finished eighth. The Pacific Zone (PAC), Coastal California Zone (CST), and Pacific Southwest Zone (PSW) had one team place in the top 8 in every age group and two teams place in the top 8 in two age groups. The Southern Pacific Zone (SPA) had two teams place in the top 8 in all three age groups.
Although we can disagree about how many points should be awarded to a zone for finishing in a particular spot, the rankings of the zones from this year’s tournament are unsurprising:
SPA – 29
PAC – 25
CST – 24
PSW – 17
NEZ – 9
CEN – 3
SWZ – 1
I suspect if we conducted this exercise every year, we would find that the SPA, PAC, CST, and PSW Zones usually finish one through four.
The zone rankings help explain why the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Southern Section almost always has more high school teams in my unofficial end-of-season top 20 list than any other two sections combined. Namely, the Southern Section includes two of the three strongest ODP zones (SPA and CST). The PAC Zone, on the other hand, includes two of the top three or four CIF sections (the North Coast Section and the Central Coast Section).
To make the CIF Southern California Regional Tournament more meaningful, the CIF could divide the Southern Section into two sections (one corresponding to the SPA Zone and one to the CST Zone). Similarly, if the CIF were to establish a state tournament, the Southern Section should be divided into two sections. Otherwise, the winner of the Open Division in the regional and state tournaments will almost always be from the Southern Section.
In my opinion, the PSW Red cadet team (9 of the 14 players on this team play for Del Mar) had the most impressive performance in the ODP tournament. CST Red beat a very good PAC Red team in the semifinals of the cadet tournament. Nevertheless, PSW Red beat CST Red by 8 goals in the finals. This performance is even more impressive when considering that two of PSW’s best Class of 2027 players (Cathedral Catholic’s/Del Mar’s Kenly Axline and Jett Taylor) played for PSW’s youth team and two other highly-regarded PSW Class of 2027 players (Cathedral Catholic’s/Del Mar’s Eamon Bruhn and La Jolla’s/La Jolla United’s Dexter Black) chose not to try out for the PSW team.
If Del Mar plays its top 16u players in the 16u age group in the Futures League Super Finals and Junior Olympics, it will be the favorite to win both tournaments. Other than Del Mar’s 16u team, the non-SPA Zone teams that have the best chance to medal in the 16u and 18u age groups are Stanford’s 16u team and CC United’s 16u and 18u teams.
Regarding the 2025 high school season, the ODP national championships supported my belief that JSerra has the strongest group of Class of 2028 players, Cathedral Catholic has the strongest group of Class of 2027 players, and Newport Harbor has a slightly stronger group of Class of 2026 players than JSerra. It’s too early to say which school has the strongest group of Class of 2029 players. In Northern California, Menlo has the strongest group of Class of 2028 players, Miramonte has a slightly stronger group of Class of 2027 players than Campolindo, and Sacred Heart has the strongest group of Class of 2026 players.
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CST Blue held SPA Red to a 6-6 tie by end of the 3rd quarter before the game got away in the 4th. SPA was certainly sweating at that point. Had this been a normal tournament CST Blue would have certainly taken this game as SPA #12 cap had 5 exclusions (3 by end of 2nd quarter) and certainly influenced the flow of the rest of the game.
If I understand you right, a player was able to stay in the game after 3 exclusions…? Are there any other exceptions or special considerations regarding rules or playing time during this particular tournament?
That’s correct. Because this is a Olympic pipeline tournament, National ODP coaches allowed kids who majored (3 exclusions) or who were rolled to come back into the game. This happened in various games I observed over the weekend.
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I always thought they should do something different for this scenario. An example would be to award a 5M on > 3 ejections or two PP’s in succession.
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It is an opportunity for the national team coaches to discuss with the players what the ejections were and how to improve. I don’t think rewarding teams with a penalty shot necessarily provides opportunities for teaching and growth. While slightly strange, I think providing players that growth opportunity and letting them continue to play helps the players in the long run.
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Yes, instead of immediate shoot out in the case of a tie as is the normal rule they instead did 5 minutes of sudden death over time.
Also they allowed “substitution” timeouts in situations where there was a long time between goals because teams had play time quotas for all players. Without charging one of the two allowed timeouts.