Newport Harbor boys’ water polo defends South Coast Tournament title

Read Full Article here: https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/sports/story/2025-09-22/newport-harbor-boys-water-polo-defends-south-coast-tournament-title

By Matt Szabo - Staff Writer. Daily Pilot: 

The Newport Harbor High boys’ water polo team has 13 seniors this year, but that’s far from an unlucky number for the Sailors.

The class of 2026 is eager to defend last year’s CIF Southern Section Open Division title.

Newport Harbor also has a renovated aquatics complex with a new name, Bill Barnett Pool, after the late coaching legend who guided the Sailors for nearly five decades.

Newport Harbor goalie Connor Clougherty (1) makes a save against Sacred Heart Prep in the semifinals of the South Coast Tournament on Saturday. (James Carbone)

The Sailors opened up the South Coast Tournament championship game on Saturday with a couple of patient six-on-five goals that Barnett surely would have appreciated.

Connor Ohl passed to Marco Rizof, who found Geoff Slutzky for a strike on the first goal. The second sequence was also crisp, with the ball quickly changing hands from Dash D’Ambrosia to Ohl to Declan Bartlett, and finally to Slutzky.

Newport Harbor started and finished strong, earning a 12-7 victory over Cathedral Catholic to win its host tournament for the second straight year.

Newport Harbor’s Connor Ohi (14) shoots and scores against Sacred Heart Prep on Saturday. (James Carbone)

Slutzky, a Harvard commit, scored the first three goals of the final to tie him with D’Ambrosia for game-high honors. Senior goalkeeper Connor Clougherty anchored the defense with 10 saves, and also scored a goal in the fourth quarter after a Cathedral Catholic seven-on-six attempt went wide, leaving the Dons’ goal exposed.

“Most of us have been together since we’ve been 10,” Slutzky said. “To be able to be all seniors together playing for our high school as one team, the chemistry we have is something special.”

Newport Harbor (11-0) beat Cathedral Catholic for the second time this season, but the visitors offered a challenge. The Sailors went up 7-3 early in the third quarter on Hudson Parks’ power play goal, but the Dons closed to 8-7 after Braylen Axline and Max Arnold (penalty shot) scored in the final minute of the frame.

Newport Harbor’s Marco Rizof (9) raises his fist after a score against Sacred Heart Prep in the semifinals of the South Coast Tournament on Saturday. (James Carbone)

But D’Ambrosia scored all three of his goals in the fourth quarter — the first two on the power play and the third on a backhand assisted by Rizof — to give the Sailors some breathing room.

“I thought the whole tournament, he was confident and composed with a bunch of timely goals, and even little defensive moments,” Sailors coach Ross Sinclair said. “He’s made a big improvement.”

Senior Kai Kaneko, committed to Stanford, added a pair of goals for Newport, who also got scores from sophomores Sean Anderson and Caruso Polenzani. They survived despite Ohl, another Stanford commit who had three assists, fouling out midway through the third quarter.

Newport Harbor’s Dash D’Ambrosia (4) looks for an open player against Sacred Heart Prep on Saturday. (James Carbone)

The Sailors beat Atherton Sacred Heart Prep by the same 12-7 score in the South Coast Tournament semifinals earlier Saturday. D’Ambrosia, Rizof, Ohl and Polenzani led with two goals each, with Kaneko, Anderson, Bartlett and Mason Netzer also scoring.

The Bill Barnett Pool opened up for the Sailors to train on Aug. 25, Sinclair said. The pool will be dedicated following the boys’ and girls’ alumni games on Oct. 25.

“We’re just happy to have a home pool to play in,” said Sinclair, whose teams adopted a “Road Warrior” mantra last school year with practices at other schools in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District and home games at rival Corona del Mar. “I told them that there’s three classes in the history of this program that have got the opportunity to open up the season in a new pool.”

Newport Harbor’s Declan Bartlett (3) looks for an open player against Sacred Heart Prep on Saturday. (James Carbone)

D’Ambrosia said everyone on the team was happy to be back on campus.

“Having this first home tournament, especially every game in this pool, just reminded me how much I missed it,” he said. “The environment here, the locker room, how the team feels in this pool with the community around us, it’s special.”

Newport Harbor and Cathedral Catholic are both entered in the Oct. 2-4 Elite Eight tournament hosted by Studio City Harvard-Westlake. The Sailors also host the Dons in a nonleague match on Oct. 11.

Among other local teams, Corona del Mar earned ninth place in the South Coast Tournament, finishing with an 11-4 win over Mira Costa. Huntington Beach finished 23rd in the 32-team tournament, topping San Clemente 18-10 in its final game.

Read Full Article here: https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/sports/story/2025-09-22/newport-harbor-boys-water-polo-defends-south-coast-tournament-title