Agreed. Dexter Black played phenomenally and spearheaded La Jolla. He controlled the ball and facilitated pretty much every La Jolla possession while being guarded by Jett Taylor 90% of the game. Dexter scored the game-winning 5 meter after feeding the player who earned the 5 with an incredible pass.
La Jolla played really well as a team. Their goalie had some huge blocks to go along with some massive field blocks in the second half. La Jolla dropped so heavily and relied on those crucial blocks.
Jet did an excellent job shutting down Dexter. But La Jolla has had impressive chemistry as a team all year and everyone stepped up. Very surprising, but very few teams in this division have a strong perimeter game, save for LJ and that made the difference. Every player stepped up.
Not at all trying to discredit La Jolla’s victory, obviously very impressive win. However if I am not mistaken all San Diego Cif games are played at La Jolla? To some extent this has to give an advantage to La Jolla no? Why don’t they play at another pool?
I am assuming the pool is chosen some time ago, or based on availability. I would be surprised if any competitor or coach would say the pool location influenced any outcome.
San Diego CIF finals – indeed, all the CIF games in Open – are always at La Jolla’s pool (except during COVID). That pool has the largest stands, though not by a lot, and is reasonably centrally located (though the east county folks take exception to that claim). There’s a long-running debate as to whether that meaningfully helps La Jolla.
La Jolla HS has a long history of water polo excellence and is always fielding extremely competitive teams. However, since 1993 La Jolla high school has won 1 D1 boys’ championship in 2015 and since 1997 zero girls’ championships. So, after 61 water polo seasons they now have 1 D1 boys and 1 Open boys’ title. I don’t think the pool location is making a difference as the other top programs in the County are a very short drive to the pool and well attended by visiting teams.
It comes to a question of what La Jolla would choose the critical/final game location if their own pool was one of the options. I think the answer would be pretty obvious.
Of the ten 50m pools in SD, the following would be disqualified if Coggan is disqualified:
Granite Hills, Coronado, CCHS (and Coggan).
Alga Norte hosts at least one HS team, so that would also not work.
That leaves UCSD (2 50m pools), SDSU, and Southwestern College (2 50m pools) as aquatics facilities that are not owned by a school district or that do not host HS teams (noting that UCSD no longer hosts University City or Torrey Pines).
I believe UCSD made the decision after Covid that they would not host HS teams. I also believe that SDSU is not willing to host HS events. Southwestern could be an option, but the price per lane for 10 days of games could be prohibitive.
Understood, but on the question of capacity UCSD and Southwestern have all the seats anyone could ask for, as does CCHS. Building temp bleachers at Coggan (as they also do for CIF Swimming at Granite Hills) is an option that is not workable (for water polo) at Granite Hills or Coronado.
This sets up a thread-merge with one of my other favorite topics: lack of available water in San Diego (which changes at the margin in January when the 37 meter SDUHSD aquatics center at Torrey Pines HS opens).
SS used to use Woollett, which hosts Irvine HS, before switching to MtSAC.
If the colleges in SDS won’t host, then where could CIF host games?
…and Southwestern isn’t a convenient location for anyone in the Open Division. If you were to give CC a choice between La Jolla or Southwestern I think the choice would be obvious.
This discussion is similar to the debate that went on for 25 years in CIF-SS. From 1981 to 2005, Long Beach Wilson made frequent appearances in the playoff final match. Those matches all those years were played in Belmont Plaza, which Long Beach Wilson often used for workouts and home games. But, there was no getting around it. Belmont Plaza was THE place back in the day.
Selecting SW College as a host site is problematic for a host of reasons, logistics and traffic being just the two most obvious. A few years back the CIF open final for football was hosted at SW. It was very challenging for fans to get to (and that was for an evening event).
Also, 44 teams in SDS make the playoffs, with the host site handling 30 games over 11 days (Wed, Fri, Sat, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Sat) for 16 quarterfinals, 9 semifinals (counting the play-in), and 5 final games (again, counting play-in classification).
Is the argument that Coggan (which is not a SDUSD property–it is owned by an independent non-profit foundation) should not host CIF games because it gives an unfair advantage to one team that has (checks notes) never before won an Open division title and last won a title in 2015 (Div 1)?
That actually would have been a real advantage for Wilson. Not many teams would be used to playing in a venue like Belmont. My recollection was it was very hard to hear in there
Southern California Division 1 quarterfinals:
Cathedral Catholic 15, Mira Costa 10
La Jolla 15, Loyola 12
Newport 18, Mater Dei 9
Oaks Christian 14, Corona del Mar 8
Northern California Division 1 quarterfinals:
De La Salle 15, Menlo 11
SHP 16, San Ramon Valley 10
Miramonte 17, Rio Americano 12
Campolindo 13, Soquel 10
Northern California Division 2 quarterfinals:
Redwood 15, Merced 11
Saint Francis 11, Clovis West 8
Buchanan 14, Rocklin 5
Clovis 13, Clovis North 10