Women’s Water Polo: Long Beach wraps up SCC title with win over Chaffey, seeded second for SoCals

The Long Beach City College women's water polo team reclaimed the South Coast Conference championship with its 7-4 win over Chaffey College in Saturday's SCC tournament final at Cerritos.

The win over Chaffey capped a weekend of three victories at the SCC tournament and gave the Vikings the conference championship for the first time since 2007. For head coach Chris Oeding, it was his seventh SCC championship in 11 seasons here at LBCC.

Long Beach, seeded No. 2 at the SCC tourney, began its run on Friday with a 25-1 thrashing of El Camino College. All nine of the Vikings' field players on the roster scored in the rout, with sophomore Alexandria Blank leading the way with five goals. Sophomores Hollie Mickelson and Sarah Agopian, as well as freshman Christine Meier each scored four goals.

The Vikings returned to the pool later in the afternoon to defeat host Cerritos 10-7 in the semifinals. LBCC trailed 6-5 at halftime before holding the Falcons to just one goal in the second half. Meier and Agopian led Long Beach with four goals each.

And in the conference championship game on Saturday, the Vikings avenged their lone SCC loss this season to Chaffey with its 7-4 victory. Once again Long Beach played a tough defensive second half to pull out the win. The game was tied 2-2 after the first half before Long Beach exploded for five second-half goals. Agopian and freshman Lauren Sweet led LBCC in the final with two goals each.

Following the SCC championship win, the Vikings were awarded the No. 2 seed for this weekend's Southern California Championships at Cuesta College.

Riverside earned the top seed, followed by LBCC (#2), Chaffey (#3), Golden West (#4), Cerritos (#5), Orange Coast (#6), Fullerton (#7), Grossmont (#8), Ventura (#9), and Cypress (#10).
 
Long Beach enters the tournament with a 25-4 overall record. LBCC will face the winner of Fullerton vs. Cypress on Friday (Nov. 12) at 12:45 pm.

A win on Friday would send LBCC to the semifinals on Saturday to play either Chaffey or Orange Coast. A semifinal win would also go down as Long Beach career win No. 300 for Oeding.

The championship final is scheduled for 2:45 pm on Saturday with the third-place game set for 1:30 pm. The top three teams at the SoCal Regionals advance to the CCCAA Water Polo State Championships at American River College in Sacramento on November 18-20.