It has been a long time since I have seen a team dominate the way that Santa Barbara did this year. Every girl on that team can play at a very high level. Congratulations to a great program.
I am not sure where all of the girls on this team are from, but it does make me appreciate their previous spectacular squads that mainly pulled from the three local high schools.
Jeff did post this info at the top but here are the high schools:
San Marcos SB: 3
Oaks Christian: 6
Orange Lutheran: 1
Chadwick School: 1
Definitely one of the more unique teams built for JOs in a long time, will be interesting to see if this is a one time thing or if Oaks girls continue to commute to SB.
I think SET dominated more in their first place game ( also against LAMO) in 2024. I remember the first half of that game was all SET. To take nothing from the fantastic 2026 Santa Barbara A 18u team, as these super talented girls did a phenomenal job, there was not too much of Santa Barbara polo on that team.
They formed a super team to win JO’s, just like the boys 18s teams do
JUst because they are called Santa Barbara WPC does not mean their players need to be from Santa Barbara high schools or live in Santa Barbara. What High schools were the SET players from? What city did they all live in? Did they all live in El Toro?
That’s simply not true. All of those girls have been playing together for years with the exception of Allison Cohen, who joined SB 805 this summer when her previous team, SET, fell on hard times after Ethan Damato’s departure. This is the same core group of girls who finished 2nd at 16U’s two years ago after losing to Regency in the finals at Avery. No super team was formed.
All I wanted to say that afaik only three girls live/ study within a 30 miles radius of Santa Barbara, and only four live/ study within a 50 miles radius of Santa Barbara.
I doubt that this was the case with SET and El Toro. Anyway, two things are probably true. First, they had every right to form any team they wanted. Second, if indeed they practiced together for years then probably nobody could have any issues with this arrangement.
It was also Alex Stoddard’s first time playing with this group at JOs so that was an add as well.
Not saying anything negative here either, just that it was a uniquely built team over many years including this one that led to it being one of the all-time great JO teams in my opinion.
PS: massive kudos to the families that have committed to driving to SB from the San Fernando Valley for many years, what a commitment.
Alex is the best goalie in the 2026 class imo. Also Canadian NT.
CIF late season games San Marcos (Santa Barbara) reliably won (twice) against Oaks
This hints that while numerically there are more (6) Thousand Oaks schooled (and regular season teamed) girls, Santa Barbara was still the significant backbone for JO “Santa Barbara” 18u team, enough to still call it “Santa Barbara” with a straight face.
It makes sense for Oaks women to try to play with other teams in off-CIF games:
May, July only perhaps. Doubt Oaks is ok with their students playing with other clubs during regular season.
Orange Lutheran is 140 miles (4 hours with LA traffic - one way) from Santa Barbara. 8 hours per day of commute? 
highly doubt that commute existed. Prolly JO-thing only. Chadwick is ~100miles and same.
It’s interesting to compare these Frankenstein teams to something like Newport (which will never have a player from outside of Hewport HS). Closed clubs like Newport, Legacy, (Mission?) are effectively at self-imposed disadvantage.
However, if you were a great player that wanted to play somewhere, and your team for the last couple years had pretty much disappeared, and somebody from Santa Barbara told you " hey why don’t you come and live with us here in SB for a couple months, and play with us through the JOs."
I don’t know about you, but if I was that kid, I would give it some very serious thought 
The private schools do put themselves at a certain disadvantage when it comes to JOs, however they use their club as a way to make you join and pay tuition at their High School.
You want to play for Regency, sure, enroll at MD and you can play at Regency, as an example.
Legacy is not actually a closed club in the same sense as Regency or others. It’s more like “kinda closed”
By they way, Oaks won the girls CIFSS Open division the last two years running, so not sure how you come to the conclusion that the San Marcos girls were the back bone of this JO winning team, but looks to me like the ‘back bone’ of the team is a combo of many players, filling different roles, and accepting those roles, for the benefit of winning
Recent history from my understanding, SET drew its lion share of players primarily from Laguna Beach HS 10 miles away, Santa Margarita HS 10 miles away, El Toro HS and a few others schools locally ( Trabuco, J Serra, more ), or had graduating Seniors where they were excluded from participating with their High School team. LBHS is/was a D1 feeder for years with countless super athletes.
Either way the story line, Congratulations to Santa Barbara and Coach Jaime Neushul!! Wonder where she learned that from? 