Huntington Beach boys’ water polo falls to Mira Costa in Division 1 semifinals

MANHATTAN BEACH â€”  The Huntington Beach High boys’ water polo team won the CIF Southern Section Division 1 title last year.

But after losing three top college commits to graduation as well as their head coach, the Oilers came into this year in transition.

“Battling through a new coach, that’s a whirlwind, right?” first-year head coach Nick Graffis said. “And it wasn’t just a new coach for the season. Sasa [Branisavljevic] was their coach year-round, so all of a sudden during their offseason they’ve got a new coach to adjust to. Then season rolls around, and they’ve got their second new coach to adjust to. All of them came every day and worked their butts off. We weren’t always clicking on the same wavelength there early on, but the last month, I would say we really were clicking.”

The Oilers battled back to the final four in Division 1, but were unable to pull off their second straight upset Tuesday night.

No. 3-seeded Manhattan Beach Mira Costa pulled away late for a 15-7 victory, booking its spot in Saturday’s final at Mt. San Antonio College against top-seeded Thousand Oaks Westlake.

Huntington Beach (15-15), coming off an 11-10 upset win over No. 2-seeded Long Beach Wilson in the quarterfinals, saw its season end a match away from trying to defend its title.

Huntington Beach’s Charlie Jones (3), shown celebrating a goal last week against Long Beach Wilson, scored twice Tuesday night at Mira Costa.

(James Carbone)

Charlie Jones, Dusan Djordevic and Dane Driscoll each scored three goals for the Oilers, who had to battle just to get into the postseason. Huntington Beach finished in a three-way tie for third place in the Sunset League with Los Alamitos and Edison.

After losing a tiebreaker game against the Griffins on Oct. 23, the Oilers had to beat Edison — Graffis’ former team — by a 15-14 score to secure a postseason birth.

“[Branisavljevic] leaving was a really big change,” said Jones, a senior center defender headed to UC Irvine. “But I think Nick Graffis did a great job coming in and building the team back up, building a new team culture. It’s been a grind for these past few months. Seeing it end like this isn’t great, but honestly making it to the semifinals in a close game, you can’t really ask for much more than that. We did really well.”

Jones scored twice in the first quarter against Mira Costa (22-11). The Mustangs got three first-quarter goals from Flynn Guenther, all of them on penalty shots drawn by Lucas Pierce.

Guenther finished with a match-high seven goals, matching Huntington Beach’s total by himself.

The score was tied 3-3 after the first quarter, but Mira Costa used a strong second quarter to grab an 8-4 halftime lead.

“We had to make adjustments in the second and third quarter because of those early penalties,” Graffis said. “Even though we played well in the first quarter, that first quarter did put us in a bad position.”

Huntington Beach’s Dusan Djordjevic (10), shown last week against Long Beach Wilson, scored twice Tuesday night at Mira Costa.

(James Carbone)

Huntington Beach trailed 10-6 entering the fourth quarter, but the Oilers’ Isaac Squires won the sprint, negating a Mira Costa six-on-four situation. Then Djordevic fed Driscoll for a goal from center, cutting the Oilers’ deficit to three goals.

But Mira Costa, boosted by strong play from goalkeeper Grant Anderson (15 saves), shut out Huntington Beach the rest of the way. It helped the hosts avenge a loss to the Oilers in last year’s Division 1 semifinals and reach their first CIF final since 2018.

“He played phenomenal that second half,” longtime Mira Costa coach Jon Reichardt said of Anderson. “He let a couple go in the first half, but whatever, that’s just nerves.”

Jones said he felt some of his teammates also had nerves, playing in a big match in a hostile environment.

Still, Graffis definitely felt that Huntington Beach had a season to be proud of.

“We had kind of a slow-growth season, but you see the fight this game, or more in general the entire year,” he said. “They came back from a decent amount of adversity. That’s not a [lock], for a 17-year-old kid to all of a sudden buy into something new.”