Warriors' lack of experience shows in water polo tourney

An inexperienced Fallbrook High School boys water polo team lost all five Rancho Bernardo Invite tournament games the Warriors played.

"We didn't fare very well," said Fallbrook coach Bill Richardson.

In terms of wins and losses the Warriors didn't fare well, but the 140 regulation minutes of play along with two golden goal overtime partial periods served the objective of providing Fallbrook's players with varsity competition experience.

"We're just in a pretty big rebuilding year, I guess," Richardson said.

Fallbrook began the tournament – and the 2018 season – with two Aug. 23 matches in the Rancho Bernardo High School pool. The first of those was a 13-2 loss to Grossmont. "We did our best. We hung in there," Richardson said.

The game was the first varsity contest for 11 of the 14 Fallbrook players. "We got some good experience. We got to play a very solid team. Grossmont is probably going to be in the Open Division," Richardson said.

Grossmont and Fallbrook are both in Division I for playoff purposes, as are 18 other teams. The eight highest-seeded teams at the conclusion of the regular season will compete in the Open Division playoffs while the other 12 will be in the Division I postseason. The Warriors are thus guaranteed a playoff berth, so even if Fallbrook loses in the first round the Warriors who return for the 2019 season will have playoff experience.

Fallbrook was seeded third in last year's Division I playoffs and received a first-round bye. Sixth-seeded Del Norte defeated Fallbrook in a 7-5 quarterfinal. Del Norte rather than Fallbrook thus faced Grossmont in the semifinal, and the Foothillers followed their win over Del Norte with a victory over Canyon Crest in the Division I championship game.

Grossmont had a double-digit quantity of seniors Aug. 23. Fallbrook is replacing 10 2017 seniors, including all seven starters. The 2017 varsity also included Cameron Batty, whose shoulder injury will likely keep him from playing this year, so only three of Fallbrook's current varsity players have previous varsity experience and none of those were starters in 2017.

"We're still figuring things out," Richardson said.

"There's a lot of work to be done as far as just learning who we are and learning each other," Richardson said. "It's still a work in progress."

In Fallbrook's second Aug. 23 game at Rancho Bernardo the Warriors took Scripps Ranch into golden goal overtime before the Falcons made the critical shot for a 7-6 victory.

"We got off to an early lead," Richardson said. "We let them come back and get ahead and then we tied it up."

The ability to stay even in regulation - and the ability to come back from a deficit - can be considered positive steps compared to the game earlier in the day. "We had some moments where we played very well," Richardson said.

"We had some opportunities to win the game before regulation ended," Richardson said. "We weren't able to capitalize on our opportunities."

Creating opportunities and not turning them into goals is preferable to not having opportunities, so while the failure to convert the opportunities is an area for future improvement the creation of opportunities was an improvement over the previous game.

The Warriors returned to the Rancho Bernardo pool for an Aug. 24 game against Classical Academy. The Warriors and Caimans are both members of the Valley League. Last year Fallbrook won the Valley League championship with a 5-0 league record while Classical Academy lost all five league matches.

Classical Academy took a 10-3 victory in the tournament game which will not count in the league standings. "Classical is a much improved team," Richardson said. "They have a lot of experience that they didn't have last year."

Fallbrook's Valley League opener this year will be against Classical Academy Oct. 11 at the Fallbrook High School pool. The tournament game gave the Warriors a firsthand look at the 2018 Caimans. "Hopefully it will be like a measuring stick for us," Richardson said.

Both of Fallbrook's Aug. 25 games were played at the Granite Hills High School pool. One of the returning varsity players, Tiane Maestas, missed the morning contest against San Dieguito Academy because he was taking the SAT and three other Warriors had other commitments that morning so only 10 players faced the Mustangs. "Some players got more opportunities than they may have, so that was good," Richardson said.

Despite the lack of depth, the Warriors were able to limit the San Dieguito margin of victory to 7-2.

Maestas returned for the Aug. 25 afternoon game against Mater Dei which ended as a 10-9 overtime win for the Crusaders.

"We had two games where we had a decent amount of goals and three games where we had two or three goals," Richardson said of the tournament.

Most coaches consider tournaments as preparation for league play and CIF playoffs. "It put a spotlight on the things we need to work on," Richardson said. "I think we'll probably get a lot better."

This week the squad will play in the Sept. 6-8 Helix Tournament. "We're going to do a lot of games early in the season," Richardson said.