Foothill’s boys water polo players and Coach Jim Brumm pose for a picture with the CIF title plaque. (Tim Burt photos)
Foothill’s boys water polo team wasn’t expected to be at center of the pool deck Saturday afternoon at the Woollett Aquatics Complex receiving the CIF Division 2 championship plaque.
To see the slide show, please click on the first photo
But the Knights found a way to get to the finals and captured their second consecutive CIF crown, defeating third seeded Mira Costa 6-4 for the school’s sixth CIF title in boys water polo.
“It feels really good, it’s a young team,” said Foothill Coach Jim Brumm after jumping into the pool to celebrate the title. “They’ve done a tremendous job. It’s been really fun coaching this year. These guys were a hard working group. It was real easy to go to practice every day and train.
“We kind of started feeling it here down the stretch run. It’s a good team and I think they really played as a team too. I think that was the key. We have some good ball players but I thought they played really well together. In some years, I came here and you were expected to win or maybe you were the number one seed. But this year, you kind of went out and played each game.
“I kind of looked at our draw and thought it was going to be a really tough draw and we were going to have to play really good teams to get through. And we made it through. We knew we had to play good every game.”
Foothill (21-10) avenged a regular season loss to Mira Costa with exceptional defense, led by goalkeeper Liam Harrison (15 saves) and a solid offense. Whittaker Worland led the Knights with three goals. Noah Rowe had two goals and Adam Florman one goal.
Mira Costa (21-9) was led by Troy Gleason with two goals.
Foothill led 3-2 at halftime but Mira Costa tied the match 4-4 on a goal by Gleason with 25 seconds left in the third quarter.
However the Knights countered with goals by Worland and Rowe in the final quarter to win it.
“It was just a really fun game, really exciting,” said Worland, a junior. “It was definitely a defensive game. We knew what they were going to bring to the table and we brought our shot blocking.”
Worland was also on last year’s team that defeated CdM for the title.
“This is completely different,” he said. “Last year we had 15 seniors; this year about two thirds of our team is freshmen, so it’s like night and day.”
“That was a good defensive game; offensively, we did just enough,” Brumm added.
-Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
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