Santa Cruz 14u had an excellent team in the summer of 2024 that finished 6th. The 2025 and 2026 teams were very good, but, especially in the 2026 case, top heavy- please corect me if I am wrong about it.
Here is the Google document for next weekend’s Arroyo Grande Tournament:
I am a bit disappointed with the seeding of the AG tournament. I think many would like to see the Carondelet vs Miramonte final. I get that Campolindo, Miramonte and Carondelet have just one loss each, but Miramonte clearly has the strongest record at this point, and Carondelet probably has the second strongest one.
Miramonte beat Campo 9:5 at Acalanes and lost to Campo 5:6 at Campo. They also beat Carondelet 8:7, Soquel 13:11 and 16:12, SRV 11:7 and SHP 11:4. Pretty impressive.
Now compare this with Campo splitting 5:9 and 6:5 with Miramonte, and having one goal wins over AG 14:13, Acalanes 8:7, and SHP 11:10. BTW, Arroyo Grande is obviously talented but has not been that strong this year with loses to Soquel 4:14, Leland 14:20, SHP 7:12 and 6:12, and Menlo 8:9.
Finally, Carondelet lost to Miramonte 7:8, and has quality wins over SRV 13:7, Soquel 17:14, and Acalanes 8:6.
In general, we do tend to behave like a small niche sport that we are 
At the Central Valley (Clovis) tournament, Soquel was seeded #8 and AG #1 leading to their (essentially) quarterfinal game. One of the other :“quarterfinals” was Clovis vs Garces/Redwood (Visalia). At the Acalanes Invite, the organizers seeded themselves as #2, which was probably too high. AG tournament had used to have Thursday exhibition games only for the top eight seeds. The home team (AG) is not in the top eight this year, so the format of the tournament has been changed
wpolo93 - Thanks for the always showing interest in girls water polo! Appreciate the feedback on the tournament! FYI - We seeded the tournament with latest loss by Miramonte and a single game league loss as the most weight. We pride ourselves in being transparent with our seeding and tournament set up. The tournament seeding has been public for weeks and we never hide our moves.
We also added the extra Showcase game to allow us to A. be in a showcase game 
and B so we can have the 41-42nd teams a play-in game and not have a filler /bronze showcase games. Lastly the addition game allows for the showcase teams to have less rematches from previous games played.
We are stoked to have 42 teams coming to the Central Coast and hope everyone enjoy’s the games!
1 Like
Cool!
It is a great tournament, but please stop changing the times of the exhibition games- there have been a few changes already afaik. For many, it is a long drive to AG.
Tend to agree with wpolo93 here. Miramonte has the strongest track record so far this season and Campo has one quality win. I wouldn’t say that putting Mira 1 and Carondo 2 or 3 necessarily guarantees a Mira/Carondo final - especially with the parity this year, but it makes it possible. Bottom line is you have to win your games regardless of seeding and maybe I’m looking at the maxpreps rankings (which are always suspect) too closely.
Looking forward to a fun tourney. Thanks for hosting AG! Think this one is more fun for the parents!
One more comment, if I may. You mention transparency used by the AG orhanizers in deciding on the seedings of the AG Fall Invite. Indeed, one can find several columns of data (2025 Fall Invite Finish, 2025 Final MaxPreps Ranking, finishes at the Clovis and Acalanes tournaments, and MaxPreps ranking on the week before the tournament starts). But there is no given formula/ explanation in how you use this data to arive at the seedings.
Of course you do not owe anybody any explanation and it is an excellent tournament as it is! But one point of criticism might be that 2025 Fall Invite Finish and 2025 Final MaxPreps Ranking are mostly irrelevant in the middle of the 2026 season. I strongly doubt that data like this would be used in college polo for seedings of a mid season tournament, and one might argue that college polo has a lot more continuity than hs polo. This might lead to all sorts of conspiracy theories that polo crazy fans are so well known to develop Case in point, AG lost to Menlo ten days ago and Menlo has a higher current MaxPreps ranking than AG, yet AG is #9 and Menlo is #14. The funny thing is that the five teams directly below AG have better MaxPreps rankings than AG. This is not to say that AG is weaker than those teams.
P.S. AG was a top five team last year, it might end up around #10 with the current trajectory this season but probably will return to top five next year. If one gives them a boost this year based on last year’s successes one will also have to ding them next year because of this year’s less impressive results. Does not make much sense since by mid season one has a reasonably good idea where teams stand without using previous year’s results.
1 Like
From AG tournament:
Soquel vs Monte Vista 15:8
Davis vs Campolindo 7:2
SHP vs SRV 17:11
Miramonte vs Leland 11:10
Carondelet vs Arroyo Grande 9:2
Saturday’s semifinals:
Leland vs. Soquel
Carondelet vs. Miramonte
So far a pretty competitive tourney. Big question for organizers. After some very suspect and opaque seeding and showcases (as alluded to above) why in the world would you move the 5th through 8th semifinal games from the main pool (arroyo grande) at the last minute to a different pool which is not streamed just so the home/host team which is barely a top 15 team can play a home game?
3 Likes
Scores from the second day of the AG tournament:
Miramonte vs Buchanan 16:4
Carondelet vs Menlo 14:4
SHP vs Clovis 14:10
Davis vs Monte Vista 16:9
Leland vs AG 10:8
Carondelet vs SHP 12:11
Soquel vs SRV 12:11 OT
Miramonte vs Davis 10:8
Leland vs Campolindo 12:10
P.S. I am very curious how Leland beat Campo. Obviously, Chrissy Flynn is an excellent player, and they have a few other strong kids but the team roster looks pretty thin, they have very few subs, and the goalie position is not necessarily as strong as for most of the top ten teams. Anyway, a great win for Leland! Perhaps some supporting players are stronger than they looked to me.
Agree. Changes should definitely not be made to finals schedules. I’m also going to throw out a complaint about the atrocious 6-8 scoring that is happening. If the desk is not trained to do this accurately, it shouldn’t be done at all. These errors are seriously messing with players statistics through the 6-8 platform.
2 Likes
Didn’t watch the game, but Leland has a great coach in Eric. He can get a lot out of those other players and coach them up to play their role on the team.
Soquel game tomorrow will probably be really close or a blow out in Soquels favor. Lots of talent on that squad and they’ve all played year round together for a while now. Should be fun!
I heard from a parent that the organizers announced a possibility of this switch only after AG lost to Leland yesterday. I would not worry too much about the kids who have to play at another pool - I am sure they, and their parents, can overcome this potential tiny injustice. The water is still wet, the sun will still be shining, and the opponents are still the same.
Since @agpolocoach proudly mentioned transparency a few messages above, perhaps they could add a note to the tournament file that simply states that AG varsity team always plays their games at the AG pool and required changes might be made to the schedule last minute to accommodate this rule. Or, perhaps, to make it slightly more transparent, they could insert a sentence “all and any possible advantages will be given to the AG home team when it comes to the tournament seeding, opponents selection, and choosing referees and game locations”
It does bother me a little when such machinations are done at the level of youth sports (leave these crap to adults!) but, bottom line, it does not matter much.
1 Like
Agree re 6-8 stats. Games should be deleted from the platform from yesterday. Awful.
Not having top 8 teams at same pool is ridiculous. College coaches mentioned that yesterday as well.
2 Likes
6-8 stats do contain some mistakes but they “self- average” in a long run. I assume a coach can contact 6-8 if some mistakes are too significant but I would not go as far as asking to strike down the stats for the whole day/ tournament. If your kiddo played at AG the first two days then the games were live- streamed so anybody who wanted to see a game could make an informed opinion. If we are talking about the games at different pools then any potential 6-8 mistakes might be more significant. Perhaps a team could do its own 6-8 stats?
It is worth noting that several of those other players also play for some of the top clubs in the area where they are exposed to very experienced coaches and train with very talented kids. I suspect that training and tournament experience carries over to their high school team as well. The Leland team played Miramonte to a one goal loss in the exhibition, so beating Campo should not be that surprising. And they played Carondelet to a two goal loss earlier in the week. They are a competitive group.
Congrats to Soquel on winning the tournament! One can argue that Miramonte had a much tougher semifinals game but beating SRV in the quartefinals and Miramonte in the finals is impressive!
I wish the organizers kept top eight teams in the same pool on Sunday. In the first quarter of the 5-8th semifinal game, Davis’ top sniper was head butted by a SHP player away from the ball and did not return for the day. The refs swallowed the whistle. Davis was leading by two at the time. Such things have no place in the game. High school kids at the SLO pool desk did not mark some 6-8 stats (e.g. drawn exclusions) at all.
P.S. The season is super convoluted but I still think Miramonte is currently number one.
How much do college recruiters rely on the 6-8 stats over (or in addition to) direct observation, game film or locally collected stats? I generally don’t mind what they are trying to do around quantifying performance. But if the data is unreliable, and you cannot trust it, then why use it on this scale?
Appreciate all the feedback, and thank you for coming to AG and the Central Coast Pools!
We’re proud to host 42 teams across 6 pools, with 102 games played over the tournament. To make an event of this size possible, we bring in officials from Southern California and the Valley to help cover games.
We were transparent with all teams weeks in advance that some games might need to be moved so our host teams could remain at their home pools. We also provide 6–8 scoring for every game, allowing teams and families to follow scores in real time. We’re working to capture as many stats as possible, while recognizing that getting complete stats for 102 games is a huge challenge.
We pride ourselves on what makes the AG Fall Classic different: killer trophies, killer Instagram coverage (follow us @arroyograndefallclassic!), excellent announcing, great Central Coast weather, live scoring, a hype atmosphere, a DJ for the showcase games, and most importantly, creating the kind of tournament that teams, athletes, and parents call their favorite tournament of the year.
We know an event with 6 pools, 42 teams, and 102 games will always come with challenges, and we appreciate the feedback. We’ll keep listening, improving, and working hard to make the AG Fall Classic an experience teams look forward to every year. Thank you for being part of it! 
3 Likes