La Habra’s boys water polo team after Thursday’s win. (PHOTOS: Tom Connolly, For OC Sports Zone).
Garrett Carty scored eight goals and Luke Magana tallied four goals to help La Habra defeat Chino Hills 19-10 in a non-league boys water polo match Thursday afternoon at La Habra.
Carty, a junior, scored three of the Highlanders first five goals for La Habra, which jumped out to a 5-1 lead, following Carty’s goal with 2:30 remaining in the opening quarter. Magana, a senior, scored two goals and Grady Abell added a goal as the Highlanders increased their lead to 6-2 after the first quarter.
La Habra, behind the strong play of Hayden Flores, Logan Fernandez, and Duncan McKenzie, kept the defensive pressure on the Huskies and didn’t allow Chino Hills to score in the second quarter.
In the meantime, Carter Johnson and Abell added goals to boost the Highlanders lead to 8-2 at halftime. Several times in the match, the Huskies failed to get a shot off before the time clock sounded.
“After a tough weekend at the Long Beach tournament and being down a goalie, we placed a heavy emphasis on defense this week,” said Carty, who has scored 48 goals in eight games this season for La Habra. “Today, we blocked a lot of shots and that helped set up our offense. We also did a good job at getting back on defense.”
Any hopes Chino Hills (1-5) had of a comeback quickly faded in the third quarter as the Highlanders outscored the Huskies 6-3 in the quarter. Carty added four more goals and Logan Fernandez and Johnson added goals as La Habra built a 14-5 lead after three quarters.
“We had a really good counter attack today, we swam well, had a lot of steals, and our conditioning paid off,” said Magana, whose four goals was a season-high for him. “We have a big week next week so this match will give us momentum going forward.”
Adam Cisneros, Logan Fernandez, Carty, and Magana added two goals to close out the scoring in the final quarter for the Highlanders who even their record at 4-4.
“We made some adjustments on defense and our counterattack was very good today,” said La Habra coach Mitch Carty. “We had a guy (Saion Rodriguez-Vasquez) play goalie today that isn’t really a goalie and he did a good job. They pushed him a little bit and made him work today, but overall, it was good team effort.”
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