Crown the Queens: Corona del Mar girls’ water polo captures Division 1 title
WALNUT — “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” — NBA Hall of Fame coach Phil Jackson
Corona del Mar High junior girls’ water polo player Piper Sidebotham was in the starting lineup for Saturday’s CIF Southern Section Division 1 title match.
This was not necessarily the norm for top-seeded CdM. But with fellow junior attacker Tia Wells on a school trip, Sidebotham was the next player up.
She shined with a season-best four goals. The Sea Kings needed every one of them for the perfect way to cap a season of growth.
CdM held on for a 12-11 victory over No. 3-seeded JSerra at Mt. San Antonio College, earning its second Division 1 title in three years and the program’s eighth CIF championship overall.
“We had Tia gone, so I had to step up and play for my team,” Sidebotham said. “It was a really exciting game, obviously, because we’re all friends. We’ve been friends for a really long time. These are my best friends, so I just wanted to show out for them.”
Senior Ava Schoening had three goals, five exclusions drawn and three steals for Corona del Mar (20-11), which stormed to a 3-0 lead in the first quarter. The Sea Kings led throughout the match, and 11-6 after three quarters, but had to withstand a furious JSerra rally after CdM junior standout Reagan Weir fouled out near the end of the third.
Weir scored twice before her exit, while juniors Mackenzie Dollander, Audrey Long and Didi Evans added one goal each. Evans also had three assists and three field blocks.
CdM junior goalkeeper Gabby MacAfee also shined with 12 saves, helping the Sea Kings avert two JSerra six-on-four situations without any goals being scored.
“It was definitely stressful, especially with Reagan being rolled,” MacAfee said. “We really had to pull together. I thought our motivation, just our want and desire for this title, really helped carry us all the way to the end through the stressful moments.”
Sidebotham scored on four of her five shot attempts and also had a team-best four assists.
“We are a two-meter team,” first-year CdM coach Marc Hunt said. “We’ve got big centers. Between Reagan and Ava both, they’re tough to guard … they tried to take them away and Piper answered the call.”
Junior Payton Netherton, the younger sister of former Newport Harbor standout Morgan Netherton, scored twice in the final two minutes of the match for JSerra (18-9). The last goal narrowed the Lions’ goal to a single goal, but all CdM had to do was play keep away for the title.
Sophomore Sloane Paulson led the Lions with four goals.
In an interesting wrinkle, CdM’s players had to see their former coach across the pool deck. Melissa Seidemann served as an assistant for her sister Natalie, the JSerra head coach.
“We saw Melissa and knew she was going to be here, but we kept in the zone,” Schoening said. “We talked about mind set, and being able to breathe clearly to calm ourselves too. I think that really helped us in the end.”
CdM is not participating in next week’s CIF Southern California Regional tournament due to low player numbers, Hunt said, so the Sea Kings ended their season Saturday with the championship plaque.
Hunt, who coached the UC Irvine men’s water polo team for 17 years, found a championship in his first season as a high school head coach.
“You come in as a new coach, you often wonder what the acceptance level is going to be,” he said. “The girls were focused on wanting to win, and we laid out the plan for it. That’s the most satisfying thing as a coach. You get your team to buy in, and you have a result like this, it just helps our growth. It helps us really push into next year.”
CdM will lose just two seniors, Schoening and goalkeeper Dahlia Archer, to graduation.
“We’re really excited,” MacAfee said. “Our [junior] group, we didn’t all play tougher last year, so this was our first year to play all together. There’s a lot of us. We’re having major success now, and we’re only going to get better as a team next year.”
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