Laguna Beach boys’ water polo stays alive after marathon win over Huntington Beach
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Ellis Minck turned to the sizable crowd and raised his arms, holding up the index finger on each hand as the pool deck erupted with noise.
Electricity seemed to be running through his body.
Just a couple of minutes earlier, he thought his high school career for the Laguna Beach High boys’ water polo team was ending. But his goal at the fourth quarter buzzer kept the Breakers alive, tying the score in Thursday night’s CIF Southern Section Division 1 playoff quarterfinal match against Huntington Beach.
The teams went two overtimes and were still tied, so the game went to a third, sudden-death overtime period. Minck again held the ball.
This time, he passed it to his left, to junior Mason Jakle, for the win.
Jakle scored the game-winning goal as the Breakers earned an epic 11-10 win over the Oilers at El Toro High.
‘It’s a great moment, obviously,” Jakle said. “Tonight, I wasn’t having my best shooting night. I didn’t make a lot of shots I should have. What I’ve struggled with in the past is that whenever I missed, I’d replay it in my head, over and over again. I just tried to have a goldfish memory about it, just move on to the next play and never waver my confidence.”
No. 3-seeded Laguna Beach (24-6) next has a road trip in store. The Breakers will play at No. 2 Goleta Dos Pueblos (23-6) in a Division 1 semifinal match on Tuesday.
Motivation will not be hard to find there, as Dos Pueblos has a pair of one-goal wins over Laguna Beach earlier this season, including the final of the Santa Barbara Invitational. Then again, the Breakers have also drawn motivation from the fact that they weren’t one of the eight teams selected for the Open Division, despite having victories over three of the teams — Loyola, Corona del Mar and Beckman.
“I think there’s no reason that we can’t go and take it from them there,” Minck said of next week’s game against Dos Pueblos. “We’ve been prepping a lot. We definitely know how we lost the two times before, and I think we’ve fixed it. We’ll leave it up to next week to see how it goes.”
With 24 wins, Pacific Coast League champion Laguna Beach has also tied the school record set by last year’s team.
The Breakers had to earn it against Huntington Beach (16-15), in the teams’ first meeting since the 2023 Division 1 title match. The Oilers were ahead 8-6 in the final minute of regulation Thursday night.
But a steal by senior Zach Hornstein, who led Laguna with three goals, gave the Breakers the ball back. After a timeout, senior Finn Leverty scored to cut the Breakers’ deficit to one.
Huntington Beach elected to have senior goalkeeper Van Johnston hold the ball for the entire ensuing possession, dumping it with 17 seconds left.
“You want to make sure that you have a setup defense, rather than give up a chaos goal there,” Oilers coach Nick Graffis said after the game.
Chaos still ensued. The Breakers worked the ball from the right to the left side of the pool, with Hornstein finding Minck for the tying goal at the “one” position.
Breakers coach Camron Hauer said both Minck and Jakle like to take the shot in big moments.
“They really want to step to the plate,” said Hauer, whose team won despite hitting the crossbar or goal post on several occasions throughout the game. “I don’t think any of us got scared to shoot. I think we kept shooting through it, which was good. We kept pushing, and we were ready for the win by the time the game got to it.”
Breakers junior center Warren Rootlieb scored in the first of two non-sudden death overtime periods, and the Oilers answered with a goal from freshman Zach Collins before Leverty scored again, giving Laguna Beach a 10-9 lead.
Laguna senior captain Dane Seybold had a big field block in the second overtime after senior goalkeeper Henry Day (six saves) was excluded, keeping the Breakers up by one. But the Oilers tied the score again on an outside lob shot from junior Jackson Holmes, who scored a team-best three goals.
Huntington Beach won the sprint in sudden death, but a steal by Rootlieb set up a counterattack, with Leverty earning a penalty shot. Seybold’s shot was blocked by Johnston, one of 13 saves, including two penalties, in a standout performance by the Huntington Beach junior goalkeeper.
But the rebound went to the Breakers, who earned an exclusion to set up a power play. It was Jakle’s time to shine for Laguna Beach, which is now 5-3 this season in one-goal games.
“Games like that really prepare us for this moment,” Jakle said. “We never stop. We all love each other so much and we grind so hard. That’s ultimately what I think won us the game, that love for each other and that determination to keep going.”
Huntington Beach, which has a fairly young squad, will be back.
“We’re going to be pumped when we look back on this and look at it as motivation for next year,” Graffis said. “To compete with them, to go to three overtimes, to have a fun game … It was a phenomenal game. I guess it is tough, but I think we’re going to look back fondly at it.”
