Barats headlines young boys team
MORGAN HILL — A year after coaching Sobrato boys water polo to its first league championship in history, Paul Harris is in position to do the same for the Lady Bulldogs this fall.
Undefeated through four regular-season contests, Sobrato is a clear-cut team to beat in the Santa Teresa Division. The Lady Bulldogs have won each of their league games by lopsided scores; the latest came Tuesday against Silver Creek.
That has led Harris and his players to think beyond hanging a banner in their school’s gym.
“My focus for them right now isn’t winning the league championship. It’s getting to CCS,” Harris said Tuesday. “I want them to go even farther than the boys did last year.”
To make the Central Coast Section playoffs, the Bulldogs will have to win their division and place high in the Blossom Valley Athletic League Finals tournament, which includes the top teams in the ‘A’-level Mount Hamilton Division.
Harris has never had higher goals for a team — boys or girls — since coming to Sobrato three years ago. The Lady Bulldogs, though, aren’t like any of his other teams. They feature five all-league honorees from a team that finished 12-9 overall and 7-3 in division play a year ago.
“They’ve been here as long as I’ve been here,” Harris said.
Sobrato’s starting lineup can’t be matched. First-team all-leaguer Devin Koehler and Nika Burnett are back as utility players, as are Eve Okamura and Erika Svennson, who earned respective second-team honors at hole-defense and goalkeeper as freshmen last season.
Harris said Svennson has a “knack” for stopping shots, and Koehler has improved the most.
“We work together really well,” said Burnett, the league’s 2008 Sophomore of the Year. “We focus on working together, because, if you have one player working hard and the others aren’t, it doesn’t help you at all.”
The Bulldogs’ most encouraging veteran is their lone senior, Melanie Jasper, a third-year starter at hole-set. Jasper was penciled into the all-league list in 2008 and 2007.
“She dominates,” Harris said. “Every time she’s around the ball, she’s faster, bigger and stronger than the rest of the girls. She and Nika are definitely key players. Nika does it all.”
To best understand the Bulldogs’ expectations this fall, consider this: They aren’t satisfied with winning blowouts. Rather than use their superior speed to rack up goals, the players want to fine-tune their half-court offense in preparation for BVALs.
“We can get better,” Jasper said. “We want to set up plays and pass the ball around. We’re going to have a lot better teams to beat to make CCS.”
The Lady Bulldogs are as loaded as the Sobrato boys team is rebuilding. Sobrato graduated four impact starters from its 2008 Santa Teresa championship squad and reportedly lost another one to grades.
That leaves the Bulldogs with one first-string veteran, Marc Barats, and an up-hill battle ahead in the Mount Hamilton Division.
“It’s a rebuilding year for us,” Harris said after Wednesday’s league-opening 22-5 loss to rival Live Oak. “We have a lot of people who have never played water polo. It’s just a really young team, and they’re struggling.”
Sobrato does have a few varsity veterans, including Ryan Laird, Brandon Pham, Matt Burns, Patrick Reed, Adam Jasper and brothers Timmy and Danny Thompson.
Jasper, a sophomore hole-set, had a hat trick Wednesday.
“We have muscle, but we’re lacking a lot of experience,” he said. “We’re fast and we’re strong, but we lost so many key players from last year. We’re just not as good.”
Along with restructuring their team, the Bulldogs have rebuilt their goals — starting from the ground up.
“We just want to win a game,” said Barats, a second-team all-league utility player in 2008. “The teams are a lot harder at this level; this is real water polo. We’re still playing at the level we were last year. That has to change
