2008 Junior Olympic Information

USA Water Polo has recently released more detailed information about the 2008 Junior Olympic Tournament to be held in Irvine, CA July 25-29. This year, athletes & parents are being asked to book their own flights to and from the tournament. However, we ask that you please book the following flights.

My thinking on doing it this way. First of all, several team members will be traveling ahead to look at schools and meeting at the hotel in Los Angeles. As such, I don't think we would qualify for a group rate this year. And, regardless of that fact, flights are extremely cheap right now and I think it is in the best interests of everyone to book now! I cannot foresee a situation where we will be changing these flights.

To California
July 25 -- SWA 3863 (departing at 7:05am) -- I just booked my flight for $125 (!!!!)

Coming Home
July 30 -- SWA 1960 (departing at 6:10am PDT) -- current price is also $125 (!!!!)

To my knowledge, the following individuals should be booking these flights. As I said before, I know that some athletes will not be traveling with the team to California.
Confirmed Athletes as of 4/29/08:
- Trent Going
- John Heafner
- Matt Hohenberger
- Patrick Maloney
- Jack Meara
- Michael O'Neill
- William Page
- John Savio
- Michael Sizemore

Any questions, please email me! penilla@sluh.org


-Coach Penilla

Kuppa Dominance

Congratulations to all of the players and player-coaches on their successes in the season-ending Kuppa Tournament!

Team 5 finished in 15th place at 0-4, losing their four games by a total of only twelve goals. Team 5 was the only team to hold Team 3 under double digits in goals.

Team 1 finished in 6th place at 2-2. John Heafner and Steve Sigman helped the squad to an impressive 11.0 goals scored per game.

Team 2 finished in 4th place at 3-2. Max Wurm, Trent Going, Marty Ruzicka, and Dylan Jungels anchored the stingiest defense, allowing only 6.2 goals per game.

Team 4 finished in 2nd place at 4-1. Until the final game, their lack of a goalie was overcome by contributions from the entire roster, especially Mike Sizemore and William Page.

Team 3 captured the championship at 5-0. Tim Dale and Zach Varwig led the way to an average margin of victory 4.2 goals.

JCWP's summer session will start either June 9 or June 16. See you at the pool!

Kuppa Finals

JCWP is performing exceptionally in the Kuppa Tournament. All five teams have played well, and the senior leadership is impressive. The schedule for tomorrow is below. All games are at MICDS.

At 7:45 AM, Team 4 plays Team 2. The loser plays in the 3rd place game at 3:00 PM; the winner plays in the championship game at 4:00 PM.

At 8:30 AM, Team 3 plays Daisy 2. The loser plays in the 3rd place game at 3:00 PM; the winner plays in the championship game at 4:00 PM.

At 10:00 AM, Team 1 plays Mad Dog 2. The loser plays in the 7th place game at 1:00 PM; the winner plays in the 5th place game at 2:00 PM.

At 11:30 AM, Team 5 plays SLAP 1.

See you at the pool.

Kittens Win!

In a fitting finish to their season, the 7th and 8th graders won the championship game of the Winter 2008 Middle School League. Playing against the same Mad Dog 14's team that
trounced them 10-4 just over a month ago, the Kittens led for most of the game before allowing the game to go to overtime. Just over a minute into the sudden victory period, Michael Sigman's shot from 7 meters found the back of the net for the thrilling 6-5 win. Thomas Morgan and Darrian Castro, respectively, were named Offensive and Defensive Most Valuable Players.

Congratulations to the players and Coaches Charlie Cutelli and Ray Kreienkamp on the team's obvious improvement over the past couple months!

Black v. Mad Dog A

Black closed out the season with a win v. Mad Dog A in a brilliant showing of counter-attack offense. Unfortunatly, I didn't commit the score to memeory, but I believe it was 14-4. The majority of those goals came in the second half, when Black switched to a drop defense that forced Mad Dog to take outside shots, leading to counter attack opportunties.

The positives from this game were:

• solid counter attack offense
• 5-on-6 defense
• 2M defense of Michael O'Neill and Trent Going
• the goaltending of Matt Hoenberger

The negatives fromt his game were:

• needlessly turning the ball over
• too many kickouts
• forced/blind passing on set offense
• 2M's not holding the positive set

It was an all-around good effort from everyone. Player of the game went to John Maurer for working hard without the ball and drawing a 5 meter in the 2nd quarter.

-Coach Tom

JCWP YELLOW VS DAISY B

After a narrow win and less than stellar play the Jungle Cat Yellow squad came ready to play this week. The first period was tight with great goaltending by Jim Bowers. There were numerous scoring opportunities that we could not finish off on. None the less with the looks we were getting it would just be a matter of time before we put the ball in the goal. Our 2 meter defenders did an excellent job of guarding a big and physical 2 meter from Daisy. I think he might have scored only one goal while setting. I was thoroughly impressed with our offensive drives and 6-5 situations. While we did not necessarily score every time down we had a lot of great cross goal pass opportunities. It was nice to see what players work on in practice actually happen in the game. The third quarter saw a slight lapse in play. I think some players were tired but in the 4th quarter JCWP Yellow was ready to finish their opponents. I think Daisy B got one and at most two shots on goal this quarter. Our flats and points were crashing on the 2 meter before he even had a chance to react. When the dust settled Yellow had won 6-3.
Player of the game went to Dan Geisman for his 2 meter defense. All in all, the coaches were happy with the outcome and the flow of the game.

JCWP ORANGE VS. MAD DOG B

JCWP Orange ended their roller coaster season with a game that reflected this up-and-down character of their season, beating Mad Dog B by a score of 9-5. In the first two quarters, Orange looked the best it had all season. The 2 meters did an excellent job of looking for good matchups,
and the offense was able to convert a few of these offensive opportunities into goals. Orange team showed a great willingness to find these matchups by sending in Misha Digman, Dan Pike, Ben Castro, Pat Archer, and Nathan Schachtman among others to set. Alistair Vierod had a phenomenal game, playing sound defense and scoring goals offensively by countering hard
after wayward Mad Dog passes. After three missed chances on 6-on-5 during the game and many missed chances the previous game, JCWP Orange finally broke loose from their 6-on-5 scoring woes when Rob Golterman buried a shot into the upper corner on a 6-on-5 while walking in from around the 7-meter mark. Dan Pike also played a crucial role in getting the offense set-up right before this goal. The Orange team's success in the first half did not translate into a smooth second half. Although the team was up 8-2 at one point, the game ended 9-5. Part of Orange team's troubles stemmed from the fact that Mad Dog began beating Orange back to defense.

Nevertheless, Orange was able to hold it together. Overall, the Orange team finished their season together on a good note, and I was really glad to see them playing their best water polo at times during their last game.

Co-players of the game were Rob Golterman and Alistair Vierod, who both made notable impacts in the win. It was good to see the team improve, and they definitely looked in top form for stretches of this, their final game together this Winter.

Coach Ray

KITTENS VS. MAD DOG 12's

The Kittens came out feisty again this week and made quick work of their opponents, beating Mad Dog 12's 14-3. Despite only having one sub for most of the game, the Kittens swam Mad Dog hard, and they left little doubt that they were the team that deserved to win. Once again, Michael Bowers and Thomas Morgan thoroughly dominated their opponents, each contributing
numerous goals to the Kittens 14 overall goals. Defensively, the Kittens were solid, with a passing lane attack that sparked many counterattacks.

Darrian Castro and Michael Bowers did a great job in containing Mad Dog's 2 meters. Although the game was played well by all Kittens, Darrian Castro was the Kitten's player of the game for his great defense and his awareness on offense. By winning, the Kittens advanced to the 12:15
Championship game for the Middle School league on Saturday, February 9. I look forward to seeing this talented squad fight for one last win next weekend.

Coach Ray

Monday, February 4

The following is the schedule for Monday, February 4. This is our last event at Chaminade.

5:00 PM - 6:00 PM middle school practice
6:00 PM - 6:45 PM Team 2 vs. Team 5
6:45 PM - 7:30 PM Team 2 vs. Team 3
7:30 PM - 8:15 PM Team 4 vs. Team 5
8:15 PM - 9:00 PM Team 1 vs. Team 3
9:00 PM - 9:45 PM Team 1 vs. Team 4

7th and 8th graders play at 12:15 Saturday at Ladue. High school players should check the Kuppa Tournament schedule at www.mowaterpolo.com for game times and sites. Games begin Tuesday night!

Kuppa Teams

The schedule for the 2008 Kuppa Tournament should be posted at www.mowaterpolo.com sometime this weekend. Games begin Monday night, although JCWP has no games until Tuesday. Players listed in bold below are team captains. Teams are to substitute every 2+ minutes of game time, and all players are to receive equal playing time through the first three quarters of each game.

More information about Monday's practice will be posted on this blog soon.

Team 1
*Ancel, Zak
D'Alessandro, Dave
Duncan, Chris
Geisman, Dan
Geisman, Matt
Goeddel, Dan
Heafner, John
Kovacs, Ben
Lewis, John
Maurer, John
Moorkamp, Sam
Morrissey, Bob
Sigman, Steve
Vierod, Alistair
Wetzel, Keaton

Team 2
*Jungels, Dylan
Beckerle, Andrew
Bretscher, Luke
Buelter, Jack
Gallas, Kevin
Gerber, Charles
Going, Trent
Harris, Eddie
Kimbrough, Ben
Kramer, Mitch
Piening, Kurt
Piening, Nick
Pike, Daniel
Ruzicka, Marty
Wurm, Max

Team 3
*Hohenberger, Matt
Brendell, Connor
Castro, Ben
Chellis, Luke
Dale, Tim
Garlock, Robert
Huang, Jonathan
Jones, Mitchell
Ladd, Elliot
O'Neill, Michael
Ottenlips, Michael
Savio, John
Schachtman, Nathan
Varwig, Zach
Wall, Patrick

Team 4
*Berry, Matt
Archer, Pat
Bequette, Mitchell
Brockgreitens, John
Debandt, Nick
Derdeyn, Will
Digman, Misha
Golterman, Rob
Gude, Andrew
Hagerty, Michael
Kabance, Joe
Luhmann, Bill
Page, William
Sizemore, Mike
Tucker, Jim

Team 5
*Bowers, Jim
*Mulch, Ben
Allen, Luke
Auinbauh, Jake
Faddis, Colby
Gleason, Brett
Maloney, Patrick
Meyer, Jake
Meyer, Mitch
Murphy, Erin
Petralia, Anthony
Rust, Tom
Venigalla, Bhavya
Wilson, Will

Black loses 7-4 to Daisy Red

It was a tale of stagnant offense.

Defensively, Black played well, especially in the drop defense. Goalie Zach Ancel had a good game considering he has been in Honduras for a month and has to play in a close game cold turkey. By dropping off the point and forcing Daisy Red to take outside shots, Black was able to generate a good amount of counter attack chances. Converting on those chances was a another story.

Generally, there was effort going to offense, but it took a while for Zach to find an open man due to a lack of winging out. Once an open man was found, it took to long to find the 2M holding his side and when a pass was thrown in too late, either the 2M lost position or the goalie/sluffer stole the entry pass. A point of improvement this week in practice will be looking inside at the first touch and making sure the goalie and other defenders aren't looking for a steal.

Another improvement can be made on the 6-on-5 as Black had a 0% conversion rate on at least 4 chances with a man advantage. The boys set-up very well, but tend to drift too far away from the goal and don't cross the goalie quick enough to create good shots.

But enough with the negative. Zach Varwig scored Black's first goal on a beautiful lay-out in one of our first possessions and nearly duplicated it a possession later. Max Wurm earned his second consecutive Player of the Game award for his tenacity during the drop defense and a perfect cross-goal pass that the shooter just barred out.

The truth is you can't play great all of the time. This was a bump in the road and I am confident that this will lead to greater effort and improvement during practice this week. It's just fuel to the fire.

-Coach Tom

Brown Squad Continues Improvement

The JCWP Brown team continued its trend of improvement with a narrow 9-7 loss at the hands of Mad Dog. Offensively, the Cats looked great the whole game with strong performances from Mitch Meyer, Colby Faddis, and John Lewis. Defensively, goalie Ben was great between the pipes making numerous incredible saves and added to his steal total by coming out of the net on counter-attacks. This is the 3rd straight narrow loss for the Cats. The marked improvement coincided with the spirited game against JCWP Orange. The Brown guys have really played well since then and everyone is ready to breakthrough for our first win.

-jp

Kittens vs. SLAP 7/8

It was an exciting game this week at Ladue for the Jungle Cat Kittens. We played the SLAP 7/8 squad who were planning on giving us quite a fight. The 1st and 2nd quarter the Kittens played very well. On offense we scored a beautiful 2 on o from Thomas to Michael B. This was something we have not worked on at all in practice but it was evident after the 2 other cross goal passes we scored that the Kittens understand this concept. The oppurtunities we had to set up the offense also went well. The team was spread out and the wings and flats released well to get the ball down the pool.
Defensively Coach Ray and I constantly told the players to play passing lanes. This was something you could tell they were thinking about and actually doing. Occasionally the other team snuck a little to close to the goal for comfort but hopefully everyone understands that their head must stay on a swivel and they need to be constantly watching the action and the person they are defending.
The third quarter we had a slight letdown and the other team came back making the score 5-4. After a pep talk from the coaches the team came out ready to play in the 4th quarter and ended up posting a win of 8-4.
The things that coach and I were really proud of were the placement of players on offense, our 2 on o and 2 on 1 cross goal passes, our releases, and our passing lane defense. Things started to seem to click.
Kudos to Peter D. for being the player of the game. He had a 1 on o and took all the time he needed to fake the goalie and score. He also drew a kickout when driving hard to the goal while keeping his defender on his back. All in all a great effort. It was a great win for the Kittens.

Games this weekend

Crews will be demolishing the Clayton-Warson overpass as part of the I64-40 shut down this weekend, beginning at 10pm, Jan. 25. Please be aware of this if your normal route to either Ladue or MICDS involves this area and plan accordingly. Warson will be closed at the demolition site; Clayton will be restricted to 1 lane. Additional information is available here.

Welcome to the New Announcements Page

Greetings JCWP players, parents, and fans!

As you can see, our Announcements page has changed places, but hopefully you will find the change has been for the better. By switching to a 'blog' style announcements page, we think that:
> the dissemination of information will become significantly easier.
> posting will become more frequent, from all coaches & levels
> you, as an interested party, will be more informed than ever!
> people will comment on posts, if they so desire.

Another great thing about going to a 'blog' is the ability to have any posts sent to you automatically through RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. You will see the logos for Google, My Yahoo, My AOL, etc. on the right side of this page. If you use any of these pages, you can add JCWP as one of your feeds. To learn more about RSS, click here.

Please pass along any questions/comments/issues that you have with the new site. Again, we at JCWP truly hope this will make our website even better.

--jp

JO '07 #12 : Lamorinda Wins National Title

Tuesday, 9:55 PDT

The team gathered at the national championship game and watched their Game 2 opponents, Lamorinda, capture the National Title by defeating SoCal 5-4.

This is the first time in history that JCWP has lost to the eventual National Champion. Haha.


jp

JO '07 #11 : Cats Lose Heartbreaker to Pacific

Tuesday, 2:55 PDT

The team lost a hard-fought game to Pacific this afternoon 7-6. It was a see-saw battle all day long with Pacific. Down 1-0 at the end of the first, the Jungle Cats relied heavily on their counter-attack in the 2nd take a 3-1 advantage into halftime. Playing their drop defense for most of the 2nd half, the team forced Pacific into taking mediocre outside shots in the 3rd quarter, and the JCats held a 1 goal advantage heading into the 4th. However, the boys from Pacific began hitting their outside shots - many of them lobs - and the Cats couldn't seem to catch a break. The game was over when, after a timeout, the team was called for an offensive foul with about 7 seconds left.

All in all, it was a great 4 days of play. The team came a long way in terms of communicating, thinking, and playing a hard 20 minutes. John Heafner led the team with 16 pts (12G, 4A), followed by Mike Sizemore (15/9/6) and Tim Dale (13/9/4).

The team comes home tomorrow night. The flight information is available on the website.

Thanks for staying up-to-date. This has been fun...


jp

JO '07 #10 : Jake & John are weird

Hmm....

JO '07 #9 : Trek to San Fran

Monday, 6:40 PDT

After dropping Coach Milford off at the airport, the team traveled up to San Francisco to enjoy the sights and sounds of the city. We were able to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, drive up and down the famous Lombard Street, walking along Fisherman's Warf, and seeing the Ghiradelli chocolate factory.

Dinner & a movie tonight....


jp

JO '07 # 8 : Cats to Play for 41st Place Game

Monday, 10:55am PDT

The team played a complete, 4 quarter game, and beat Eastside 9-5 at Monte Vista pool. Captain Mike Sizemore was an offensive powerhouse with 4 G and 3 A. Fellow captain Tim Dale had 2 G and an assist. He led the team in off-the-bar shots.

It's off to San Francisco today, and we play at Noon tomorrow.


jp