Los Al girls polo cruises past El Toro
January 2nd, 2009, 9:56 pm · 8 Comments · posted by DAN ALBANO, ocvarsity.com
Los Alamitos' fifth-ranked girls water polo team put on an impressive perimeter shooting display Friday night.
Unfortunately for the No. 9 El Toro Chargers, they had to watch it.
Freshman Rachel Fattal scored most of her seven goals from the perimeter and Jessica Dunn and Cory Dodson each added four goals as the Griffins cruised to a 19-5 nonleague victory at El Toro.
The UC Davis-bound Dunn scored all of her goals from the perimeter, including two that bounced in off the cage.
“The girls' placement (on their shots) was really good tonight,” Los Alamitos coach Dave Carlson said. “The girls were feeling it tonight.”
Los Alamitos also scored four counterattack goals.
“They were collapsing in the middle the whole night,” Carlson said of the Chargers. “That was opening up shots on the outside on the counterattack and then it was opening up shots in the setup offense from the outside.
“The girls who I have this year, even the girls who come in off the bench, they're definitely not afraid to shoot.”
8 Comments
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What Happened To Standout El Toro's Todisco?
The UCLA-bound Todisco played but Los Al's defense was excellent. That's the strength of the Grifs' game and they were crashing on Todisco. The Chargers featured a strong center in Jessica Browning, who scored twice from 2 meters. Later in the game, Todisco got some chances at center.
El Toro has an excellent new coach in Matt Tilton, who is now coaching these girls year-round. I suspect ET is going through a transition period early in this season.
Todisco is great on the counter, but you don't get many of those when u are allowing 19 goals.
Tilton will be an excellent coach. Didn't the old coach develop these girls? Is this why Tilton is the new coach? And will Tilton have to revamp the program from the bottom up?
There are a handful of seniors and a couple sophomores who played for Don Stoll (the longtime "old' coach, who gave up the girls gig to concentrate on the boys) last season, but all the other girls were lower-level players who were guided by other coaches.
This game was the Chargers' worst of the young season and is really not indicative of their ability. Perhaps more pressure on Los Al's outside shooters would have helped, but... that's just an opinion of a fan in the stands.
El Toro's only losses to county teams have been to those ranked higher than them in The Register's top 10. They played both Corona del Mar and Laguna Beach tough in the first half before losing to each by six goals -- nobody besides Newport Harbor has played either much closer than that.
El Toro opens Sea View League play on Wednesday at Trabuco Hills (varsity game should begin about 4 p.m.), then play host to a nonleague game against San Clemente on Friday, also at 4 p.m. That oughta be a good one, as the Chargers will get yet another chance to beat a team ranked higher than them.
From what I heard and saw, Stoll didn't develop his star male players either. Do you really think he isn't coaching the girls because he is going to concentrate on the boys?
Stoll said he stepped down from the post after last season because he felt he was cheating the girls of having a full-time coaching during preseason practices as he was concentrating on the boys team, which always makes the playoffs. Tilton could devote all his time to the girls, even though he was Stoll's assistant with the boys.
Chargers came back today (Wednesday) with a resounding 18-5 victory in a Sea View League opener at Trabuco Hills. Chargers played primarily second- and third-string players for nearly all of the second half of the game.
As for Stoll's ability to develop his players, most of them are pretty darn good by the time they reach him, so there's not a lot he has to do with them, except get them to play as a team -- which is a lot harder than one might suspect.
Today San Clemente came to play with a resounding win. Talking about second and thrid string players (by the way, you are insulting these ET girls) Trabuco is shall we say, not a strong water polo school.
Insulting the ET girls? Hardly ... I love them all. Yes, San Clemente scored a resounding win, but held only a one-goal lead at halftime. It was a game that El Toro could have won, as opposed to the games they played against CdM and Laguna Beach -- clearly the top two teams in the county, Southland and, perhaps, the state. And, yes, I will agree that Trabuco Hills is not a strong water polo team, but the point I am making is that ET has not lost to a team it was favored to beat (unfortunately, the Chargers also have not won against a team favored to beat them). But ET will never back away from playing a top team. Chargers have played (or will have played by season's end) all of The Register's top 10 teams except Mater Dei. And maybe they'll get the Monarchs in the Irvine Tournament. Go ET!