Golden West College's men's water polo team once again annexed the Southern California Championship held at Orange Coast College by defeating the #2 team Orange Coast 12-10. This marks the tenth consecutive Regional title and secures the South's top spot in the upcoming State Championships. That tournament will be held at Long Beach CC starting on Thursday November 21 with the Rustlers opening against Diablo Valley College.

 

The SoCal tournament started off with a win against fellow Orange-Empire Conference foe, Cypress. GWC jumped out to an 8-1 first quarter lead and were never seriously threatened after that, securing a 15-5 victory. The trio of scorers, center Zeno Kormendi (4) and Michael Rodgers and Tomas De Luca each picked up three goals. Jack Wright parceled out four assists and drew a penalty shot as did Cody Chastain, Kormendi and James Smith. Goalie Boston Frost played the final three quarters and picked up six saves as starter Pablo De Souza gave up a lone goal with the three saves.

 

The next hurdle was semi-final opponent Los Angeles Valley, always a tough opponent. The Rustlers played consistently out-scoring the Monarchs in every quarter, limiting them to two goals in each of the first three quarters and giving up none in the fourth. Final score was 15-6. Offensively, it was the six goal output of EJ Carrington that carried the team. Emi Tovar, Michael Rodgers and Neven Cerkez picked up two goals each with Tomas De Luca, Cody Chastain and Xavier Turla rounding out the scoring. De Luca also contributed mightily with six assists. Pablo De Souza was outstanding tending the nets as indicated by his 14 saves and anchoring a defense that held LAV to scoring only two of nine extra-man situations.

 

After a strong morning game, the Rustlers came back to meet the host Pirates for the championship. As is common in all sports, it is hard to defeat a strong opponent four times in one season. After besting OCC in an early season tournament game and the first conference game in September, Golden West had just beaten Orange Coast in the Orange-Empire final just one week earlier, 14-7. 

 

The SoCal title game was as dissimilar as could be. Sawyer McCormick scored his second goal of the quarter to put the Pirates up 3-1 and it was Tomas De Luca putting in a shot with 34 seconds to close the quarter that narrowed the margin to 3-2. EJ Carrington scored the first goal of the second quarter to even things up and a minute later, Tomas De Luca gave GWC its first lead of the game at 4-3. OCC quickly answered back to knot the contest at four goals each. Then, in a space of 52 seconds, Ed Handley and De Luca each put one past the Pirate goalie. After another OCC goal, Michael Rodgers calmly made a penalty shot with 14 seconds to go and the half ended with the Rustlers on top 7-5.

 

McCormick opened the third quarter with a goal to pull OCC within one at 7-6 but midway through the quarter, Golden West executed a perfect man-up situation with Carrington feeding Rodgers just as time was running out of the advantage. This extra man success occurred four of the five opportunities in the middle two quarters for the top seed, a key to the effectiveness of their offense in this game. Cade Zeilinger answered back for OCC with just over three minutes to go in the quarter. Just two minutes later, Cody Chastain got loose on a counterattack and got a great pass from De Luca to give GWC a two goal lead. However, with just one minute to go in the period, Dylan Morris scored a goal in the front court and the quarter ended with the Rustlers up 9-8.

 

The final quarter was equally tight but it was the Rustlers who struck first with a brilliant individual effort by Joao Goncalves scoring from the front court. Just a minute later, once again executing a solid man-up offense, Chastain found the back of the net and GWC went up 11-8. Not to go down without a fight, OCC responded with another Zeilinger goal via the five meter to draw to within two. Then, after a De Luca exclusion and an OCC timeout, the Rustlers successfully defended down a man. Jack Wright then stole the ball and seconds later earned a

five meter which Rodgers scored to give Golden West a 12-9 lead with just under two minutes to go. Brenden Bellavia scored for OCC with just over a minute to go but Golden West successfully ran out the clock on two possessions to prevail 12-10.

 

Golden West will await for their game one matchup in the 2024 3C2A State Championships being held at Long Beach City College from Thursday November, 21 through Saturday November, 23.