Under UCI coach George Kuntz its unusual for freshman to play as big of a role on the team as Prieto did. At one time during the season he started 17 consecutive games and was taking the corner kicks for the Anteaters. 

Prieto and the Anteaters will be on the field on Sunday at UCI, facing either Stanford or St. Mary's in the second round of the NCAA Division I men's soccer tournament.   

The 16th-seeded Anteaters earned first-round bye after winning the Big West Conference championship.

CIF BOYS WATER POLO SEMIFINALS

DIVISION III

Wednesday

No. 3 seed LAGUNA BEACH (19-11) vs. No. 2 MONTEBELLO (26-3)

Site, time: Mt. San Antonio College, 6 p.m.

Outlook: The Breakers face a familiar nemesis in defending champion Montebello. Last season, Coach Kenny Clements' Oilers defeated Laguna Beach in a nonleague match, 6-4, and then in the Division III semifinals, 10-6. This season, Montebello has beaten Laguna Beach, 11-9, and, 14-6. Both matches this fall were in September.

For the Breakers to get over their Montebello hump, they will need to have more success against goalie Ely Bonilla. In the semifinal last season, Bonilla had 14 saves. He later was selected Division III player of the year as junior.

Sophomore Nolan McConnell leads Laguna Beach with 110 goals, including 10 in two playoff matches. He has five goals in two matches against the Oilers this season. Junior Spencer Dodson is second in scoring for the Breakers with 54 goals.

Laguna Beach also needs to play smart and composed against a program used to winning. Montebello is seeking to reach its seventh consecutive Division III final.

Upper bracket

Wednesday - Damien vs. Murrieta Valley, at Mt. SAC, 7:30 p.m.

He has lead the Chargers to two CIF Southern Section championships, including in the 2008-09 season.

Along the way, he has coached some of the best players in Orange County, including Galaxy goalkeeper Josh Saunders and last season's Register Player of the Year, Jacob Kaiser.

Sjobom said he would like to finish his career with 200 soccer victories, and he has a pretty good chance to reaching that goal.

Alex Canas, who is among the best forwards in the county, is expected to return, leading a team that Sjobom said just might be among his best even though he lost Kaiser and Jordan Valenciano to graduation.

Entering the season he is just 15 victories away from 200. Keep in mind that the Chargers finished 27-2 on their run to the CIF SS title last season.

The eight team field was filled until two out-of-county schools had to withdraw because their districts are restricting travel.

The tournament, Sjobom said, will be played at El Toro and Mission Viejo, beginning Dec. 28 and ending on Dec. 30 or 31st depending upon how many teams enter.

It was that kind of season for Santa Margarita in 2008-09.

Disappointing. Frustrating. It's hard to win games when you score 12 goals total, and that includes nonleague games.

The Eagles  had one of the best goalkeepers in the area, William Thompson, but he could only do so much. The perennial CIF-Southern Section champions missed making the playoffs.

The Eagles worked hard - harder than some that made it to the postseason -  you could see that in every game, but they just lacked a pure goal scorer.

This season, though, things could be different. Coaches at both the Capo Valley and Sunny Hills summer leagues said they expect a lot more out of the Eagles this winter.

Santa Margarita coach Wade Fraser said that some talented players from JV are indeed ready to move up, but he wasn't ready to say that this team was on the verge turning things around.

"I don't want to give false hope," Fraser said recently after a summer league game at Capistrano Valley High. "I can't tell you if we are or aren't going to be better."

But the Eagles do return 13 players from  last year's squad which at times gave a glimpse into the dominant past of this team. That's a big difference from 2008-09 campaign when the Eagles returned only two starters. But Fraser saw one of them get sidelined early by an injury, so really only one returning starter actually made it onto the field last year - Thompson.

"We will have a lot more players with varsity experience this year," Fraser said. "But how much better will that make us? I couldn't tell you."

Last season was Fraser's first guiding the Eagles, taking over for one of the greatest coaches in the history of OC high school soccer, Curt Bauer. And even though Fraser's new team didn't win many games, he said he learned a lot about himself and his team, having never experienced a disappointing season like that as a coach before.

But as many a NASCAR driver told me when I was covering stock car racing, "You have to lose a championship before you can win one."

"We tried a lot of different things to fix it ... to win some games, but we could never find a way to fix it," Fraser said, "but, yes, you are always learning."

He might have discovered some new, better positions for some of his players and that could be the key to turning things around for the Eagles.

"I know the players coming back aren't going to want to have another season like that, so they are going to to everything they can to start winning again," Faser said.

The Eagles made it to the playoffs at the Capo Valley Summer League with a team that was basically the JV squad from last year. Most of the returning varsity players were either injured or barred from participating because of club team obligations. They lost in the first round of the playoffs to San Clemente's "A" team (the Tritons had two squads in summer league).

"I thought the JV guys did a great job this summer against JSerra's varsity guys and San Clemente's varsity guys," Fraser said.

Fraser said these four players are the ones to watch this season on the Eagles, the ones who are going to have to come up big to avoid another season of frustration. Here's what he had to say about each player:

- They both work hard and they rarely make mistakes. But when they do make a mistake, they have the work ethic and athleticism to make up for it

Duncan Capriotti

1 and 2. Duncan Capriotti, Midfielder, and Cullen Berry, Midfielder

3. Myles Whitaker, Defender- He's a tough kid and a hard worked and those are two attributes that you need to play high school soccer.

4. John Atkinson, Defender - He is knowledgable and he understands the game. He plays with the (Los Angeles) Galaxy's academy team, so he is getting great coach from them. He is a defender for them and we moved him back there last year, and he did a great job for us.

Those three teams will likely be in the county top 10 at one time or another this upcoming boys soccer season, which will be underway in about four months.

Four months!

Wow, time has just flown by since El Toro and Valencia both captured CIF-Southern Section championships in March.

But now, let's get back to the three teams mentioned above. Each participated in the Sunny Hills Summer League, which featured some of the best soccer that I have seen since I rejoined the beat last winter.

Valencia captured the tournament title after defeating two very talented teams in the playoffs: Servite and Fullerton.

At times the Tigers struggled with their organization during summer league and occasionally lost their shape. But this is a good team ... a VERY good team, quite possibly even a step above the program that beat Santa Ana in the Division II title game.

I know the fans' choice for the top team in the county is JSerra, and no doubt the Lions could be a deserving No. 1, as they have one of the best players in the county, Juan Gutierrez.

Valencia is right up there, returning 15 guys from last season's championship-winning team and  featuring an All-County First-Team quality goalkeeper, Bryan Escalante.

So let's start our closer look at these teams with an analysis of Valencia.

Here are the players Coach Barry Gardner believes will have the biggest impact on his team:

1. Escalante, Goalkeeper: He's a four-year varsity player and a vocal leader for the Tigers. But maybe most important, he has a knack for staying composed even in the most trying of circumstances. He is strong in the air and on the ground. He's a good all-around keeper.

2.   Thomas Marin, Midfielder/Striker: He has a great left foot and a good shot. He is a team captain who maintains control of the ball and goes forward very well.

3. Jesse Sandavol, Defender: He is a returning All-County First-Team player. Without him last season, there's a good chance the Tigers wouldn't have celebrated their first boys soccer championship  in school history. He does a great job in helping the Tigers keep their shape in the back.

Let's move on to Fullerton, a team that didn't get the respect it deserved last season.  The Indians had quite possibly the best group of defenders in the summer league.

For while it seemed as if they would never give up a goal, posting eight consecutive shutouts until Servite's Garrett Bradbury finally fired a shot past Fullerton's talented keeper, Dionney Reyes.

If all of these players who were on the field this summer indeed make it onto the Indians' roster this winter, they will likely be in the top five when the first poll is released.

Here are the players Coach George Shumaker thinks will make key contributions this season:

Villarruel

1. Francisco Villarruel, Defender: He was an All-Freeway League player last year. He's a solid all-around defender, Shumaker said. He is strong and has a lot of soccer knowledge. He knows how the game should be played, and he has great control.

2. Giovany Farfan,  Defender - He's practically a duplicate of Villarruel, which is probably why the Indians don't give up a ton of goals. He will join Villarruel on the outside, and he too knows how to play the game both mentally and physically, Shumaker said.

Lopez

3. Hector Lopez, Striker - He is a potent goal scorer, but he's also very unselfish and will pass the ball if he doesn't have a clean shot. He made a huge impact on the Indians last year.

4. Joel Barrios, Midfielder - His bicycle-kick goal last season against league rival La Habra  Shumaker said is one of the prettiest goals that he has ever seen in high school soccer.

 Now it's time to take a look at Servite. The summer league proved one thing about the Friars: they still haven't found a replacement for All-County First-Team keeper Chris Violas, who's now at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. 

Replacement probably isn't the right word to use because players of the caliber of Violas are hard to find. Not only was he a solid, talented player but he was a leader and an all-around great guy.

Coach Mike Lussier just needs to find someone who can keep them in some games, because they do have a group of dangerous group of defenders and forwards.

Lussier wouldn't narrow down his list of players to watch to three or four, so I will do it for him.

1. Eric Brunter, Defender: He was an All-County First-Team defedner last season, and judging by how he played this summer, he just might have gotten better. And the Friars need him to step up while their new keeper settles in. Brunter, though, this year might make a bigger impact on the offensive end as well. Look for him to score more than a few goals.

2. Garrett Bradbury, Forward: Last season he was returning to the team after being involved in a traffic accident that almost took his life. And as if that wasn't enough injuries also limited his playing time. But this past spring he ran track for the Friars and it appears that that has helped him to get his speed back.

Balikcioglu

3. Rafi Balikcioglu, Forward: I saw the Friars play more than five times in summer league, and I could see that he is the Friars big play maker, a guy who was always finding a way into the box even if he was well defende. Rafi and Bradbury will give the Friars a quite potent 1-2 punch this season.

4. Nick Echeverry, Forward - He missed a few weeks of summer league because he was working out with a professional team in Colombia. But once he returned, the Friars were a different team, having the speed and organiztion to put even the best defensive teams, like Fullerton, on its heels.

My pick is probably gonna be Valencia, they looked awfully good up in Sunny Hills

And on Wednesday the two JSerra juniors accounted for all of the Lions' scoring as they rallied twice to defeat Laguna Hills, 3-2, here in the championship match of the Capo Valley Summer League. It is the second year in a row that the Lions won the title of this summer tournament, which features some of the best teams in the county.

"That is what is great about this group of kids. They never give up. I tell these boys in every game until it is over it isn't over. You have to battle until the end," JSerra coach Nick Chuchuk said. "A great coach once said, 'What is the most important moment of every game? The next play.' You can never give up, and that is what we did today."

The Hawks took a 1-0 lead in the fifth minute, when Elliott Kadtoa knocked the ball into a the net while JSerra Kyle Pierce was trying desperately to get to his feet. He came out of the goal to stop one shot, but he couldn't control the rebound. That's when Kadota made his move.

The Lions, evened the score about two minutes later, when Seedman redirected a pass from Michael Portillo. And the game would remain tied, 1-1, until the final minute of the first half as Niko Shahrestani put the Hawks up, 2-1, with his goal.

"What happened for us in the first half was the two guys up top were too far apart," Chuchuk said.

Juan Guttierez

Gutierrez, a Register All-County first teamer last year, evened the game once again converting a cross from Seedman. Seedman had to make a couple of nifty moves first to break free from two tenacious Laguna Hills defenders.

Seedman put the game away for the defending Trinity League champion Lions with his penalty kick with about 10 minutes to go in the game. The Hawks were called for a foul in the box.

Laguna Hills had a couple of good chances to score in the second half. Pierece however was up to the tasks, turning away two point-blank shots. Pierce finished with three saves.

" To repeat is very nice, so that when people look at us, they look at us as one of the best teams in the area," Chuchuk said.

In some 70 minutes of soccer, the Titans, a quality team from the always-tough South Coast League, never really got a good look at the goal, and the Lions were able to cruise into Wednesday's championship match at Capo Valley High.

"My back line is very solid. And in order to win, you have to have a good defense," JSerra coach Nick Chuchuk said. Chuchuk was taking over for Davor Fabulich, who is coaching his son's team in the under-13 club national championship in Virginia Beach, Va. "What good does it do if you score four goals when you give up six. You have to have defense."

Luis Morales put the Lions up early knocking in loose ball after a corner kick in the fifth minute. The Lions, though, came with about two inches - total - of making this a 3-0 triumph.

Not too long after Morales scored, Juan Gutierrez dribbled clear of a Tesoro defender and sprinted into the box, rolling the ball to the left side of the goal. His shot, however, gently glanced off the left post. When Gutierrez turned around and saw that the ball didn't go in, he buried his head in his hands in shock.

Then in the final minute, Michael Walsh fired a line drive from the top of the box, but it bounced off the bottom of the crossbar.

"I asked the guys to fight and play hard, and they did that from the beginning to the end of the game. I am proud of the way they played," Santa Margarita coach Wade Frasier said. "That (San Clemente) is a good team."

San Clemente has two teams entered in the summer league. This one is coached by the Mike Pronier, and they earned the No. 1 seed in the playoffs. The Eagles came in as the No. 8 squad, but they gave the Tritons quite a game. In fact, they came within a matter of inches of taking the lead in the first half.

But Ryan Kaabi's line drive of a shot bounced off the bottom of the crossbar, bouncing in front of the goal.

The Tritons, too, had a couple of near misses. In the first minute of the second half, Jesus Garcia watched his shot from just outside of the box ricochet off  the left goal post.

A few minutes later, Fabian Cadillo's shot slammed into the front of the crossbar.

But finally in the closing minutes of the game, Licea converted a pass from Eduardo Ozuna, which puts Pronier's team in Monday's semifinals.