Local high school water polo is kind of like class society in England: You're either born to privilege, so to speak, or you're not.
There are the haves and the have-nots.
La Jolla, Bishop's, Coronado, Cathedral, Carlsbad, and Vista mainly populate the upper crust of boys water polo society in San Diego.
Their high school programs are undergirded and fed by the local water polo clubs: Tom Atwell coaches La Jolla, Doug Peabody at Bishop's coaches Shores, and so forth.
When high school games start, the conclusion is often foreseen, if not foregone. A power-six team is going to have to collapse pretty badly to lose to most of the lower-echelon teams.
That's doesn't mean to say that there's no competition, or that interlopers don't put a scare into the better teams, as if they had no chance to win.
But, for example, Thursday, Sept. 27, at Coggan Pool at La Jolla High, Canyon Crest Academy--though missing a player or two through the flu "the whole team got" at the America's Finest City Tournament the previous weekend, in the words of their coach--jumped out to leads of 1-0, 2-1, and 3-2 into the second half of the second quarter against the Vikings.
But that was as far as the "old college try" took the visiting Ravens. Cole Atwell, he of the seven goals (he scored 28 in four games in the Scott Roche Tournament in Menlo earlier in the season), and company emerged from their slumber to blow CCA out, 12-5, and no one acted surprised.
Conditioning and mental approach help. But ultimately, ability combines with good coaching and conditioning to decrease the potential of an "off" day or chance.
Water polo has its own closed community. There are many devoted, card-carrying members of this somewhat secret society that has its own way of speaking and somewhat jaded manner of regarding outsiders.
In no other sport I've seen is there such a level of conditioning, with 5:15 a.m. conditioning workouts three days a week not uncommon during the season in addition to the regular team practices in the afternoon after school.
It takes a while for a person not brought up in the water polo world to begin to learn the strategy, much less the words used to describe the game: two-meter, 1-2 side, 4-5 side, etc.
What's more, even to those who are long-time acolytes, well-versed in the nuances of the sport, the officials' calls during matches are often baffling. I've begun to get an idea that contact off the ball is less allowed than contact on the ball, whereas in basketball, for instance, it is just the reverse--fouling someone with the ball affects the game more and is whistled more.
There are rituals teams develop, too, like La Jolla's robe that goes to the best worker during the three-week "Hell" period of preseason training.
What goes on in the rusty, older team room next to Coggan Pool is a mystery to me, having never ventured inside. The closest I got was aiming my tiny point-and-shoot camera at Viking players and friends inside. That was a while ago.
I'm curious what La Jolla's "mental skills" coach does with team members. He probably would talk, if I say hi. I haven't brought up his craft with him yet. I see him at other sports, too--football?
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What prompted some of these thoughts was a look at the Power Rankings on the cifsds.org website for the CIF San Diego Section. In three days or so, La Jolla's ranking has moved from 14th to 10th. Some of the teams above the Vikings have several wins but are not known as powerful teams: Valhalla is ranked first, ahead of Cathedral Catholic. There are other teams in the top ten at present that are not elite. Good for them. I hope they last. It makes you think some of the coaches have not reported all their results. And the Power Rankings don't necessarily indicate who's going to end up in the Open Division playoffs, or even the top seeds in the Division 1 bracket come end of the season.
I feel like my view reflects some jadedness--it's heady to be covering a program that has had as much success as La Jolla's.
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